The Other Sniper
by DesertNinjaMHWK
Summary: From their first arrival in Fyrestone, there were not four Vault Hunters, but five. There was the other sniper. Now, five years later, fighting back against Handsome Jack, the fifth Vault Hunter returns after Mordecai's greatest loss in a story of history, revenge, humor, and blood; in an attempt at true Borderlands style. A Mordecai/ OC pairing. Spoilers for Borderlands 1&2
1. Chapter 1

**The Other Sniper**

**Chapter One  
**

The atmosphere was dim, dark. Sanctuary sat protected in the sky, quiet waist deep in the Headquarters of the Crimson Raiders. Speaking was difficult. The four new Vault Hunters had little to say as the Vault Hunters of five years ago, the three that stood present, remained in silence.

The return from the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve had brought a terrible end to an old friend. Mordecai had no want of words, only alcohol and revenge. Lilith had nothing consoling to say to him. Roland found himself better out of any conversation concerning the death of Bloodwing.

Taking a slow breath, finding some action had to be done and that he, Roland, was still in control of his Crimson Raiders and the new four awaited a mission, he said, "I need you to deliver a letter to a friend. He owes me a favor."

Quickly, however, the moment he was done speaking, as the Vault Hunters proceeded to leave the second floor of the Headquarters, Lilith intercepted them. "I need a favor," she said softly, as they stood in the stairwell. Maya looked at her curiously, glanced to the three men, she assumed Zero was a man, behind her and then back to her fellow Siren. "There's someone I need you to find," Lilith said. "Last I heard, she was somewhere in the Dust. But it's been a few years. I need you to find her and bring her back here to Sanctuary. Her name is Sera."

Axton stared back at her, crossing arms over his chest. "What's the reward?" he asked.

"Well," Lilith replied, more herself, back to her normal tone of voice. "If she doesn't kill you. I've seen her shoot the balls off a mouse at four-hundred yards."

The Vault Hunters stilled.

"Then how the hell are we supposed to get close enough to talk to her?" Salvador grumbled.

"She'll ask you what your name is," Lilith said. "And you have to reply, I have none."

"I have none?" Maya asked.

"Yes," replied Lilith. "And then, she should ask why not. Reply, I can't remember."

"That's stupid," Axton rolled his eyes.

"Want to keep your testicles?" Maya questioned him.

With a smirk, Lilith told them, "Before you do anything else today. Bring her back to Sanctuary."

The Vault Hunters left. Just outside, Axton questioned, "Scooter's sister is in the Dust, right? Think either of them know anything."

"Worth looking into," Maya replied.

Walking briskly across Sanctuary, they opened the upper door to Scooter's Garage and as their steps made noise on the metal walkway beneath their feet, Scooter looked up. "Hey there! Good to see ya!" he shouted up at them, smiling his big dumb grin.

"Information," Zero said from behind his mask, his voice haunting.

"We're about to head into the Dust, looking for someone name Sera," Maya said in a friendlier tone as she descended the stairs to stand near the mechanic.

Scooter stilled, eyes wide. "Sera..." his voice quaked, he said nothing more, only stared in the distance, past them, as if caught in some terrible dream.

The Vault Hunters left him there. They accessed the Fast Travel device and teleported themselves to the Dust where the enormous Ellie stood waiting for them. She whispered, as if someone were listening, "Scooter says you're lookin for Sera. Why in the world are you looking for Sera?"

"Know where to find her?" Axton questioned.

Ellie frowned. "Head southwest from here. When you start seeing skeletons, you're getting into her territory. Be careful, cuties. She's dangerous. If ever there was a woman scorned, that's her. Scooter tried to get her to marry him once. And, while I believe she was super nice in turning him down compared to how she dealt with all those bandits that were after her. Uh, the bodies you'll start seeing on your way out there; she still broke his heart, though. And scared his underpants brown."

"Scary women," Salvador smirked, "there are quite a few of those around." He glanced to Maya, and while she returned no look, she smiled none the less.

"Say," Ellie began, "be real careful, alright? Oh, and don't mention that you know my momma. They're apparently not very good friends. I mean, Sera leaves me and Scoot alone well enough, we don't bother her either, but she ain't come around since I told her my momma was Moxxi. Looked like a badass skag with them glowing eyes. She was furious. I don't know what happened with that. And sure as shootin', I wasn't about to ask."

"Southwest, huh?" Axton questioned, accessing the Catch-A-Ride system and taking the wheel, waiting for the others to get in.

"Look for the bodies," Ellie told them. "And her place is ontop of a big hill."

The drive from Ellie's began as hectic, bandit vehicles tailing and shooting. Above Buzzard helicopters roared overhead. The further away they moved, the quieter it became. The mountains rose around them, making the world seem darker. And then a sudden crunch beneath the vehicle, loud enough to cause alarm, brought Axton's foot heavily upon the brake, forcing them to a quick, violent stop. "What the hell was that?" he shouted, leaning out of the car, looking to Salvador and Zero in the back. And then he saw what they stared at. It was almost a barrier, piled three feet high, covered in sand. They had driven through it, crunching through old bones, bleached white by the sun, pecked clean by rakk.

The bone barrier extended in an arch from one cliff wall to the other. They were in what Ellie had called, Sera's Territory. Stepping out of the runner. Salvador rubbed the back of his neck. "Feels like we're bein watched," he said to his companions.

"I'm sure we are," Maya replied. Looking down the length of the canyon, a tall, singular spire of rock, not wide enough to be called a plateau, not small enough to be called a hill, rose out from nothing around it. "I'm guessing that's where we're headed."

"No quick movements," Zero said.

Slowly, moving from the car, they proceeded forward. Axton was sure that the only reason they were getting as close as they were was because they were walking, not running, and they didn't appear to look or act like bandits. The closer they got to the rock spire, the more he began to wonder if anyone was home. He was finally able to see rickety-looking stairwell that zigzagged up the right side of the rock. And then it came, a line before their feet exploded into pillars of sand. They stood very still.

"What question can you **honestly **never answer yes to?" they heard, a voice that didn't sound as if it were high above them, but from mere feet away. A conversational voice, not a shout, nor a sound of distress. A woman's voice. Calm and questioning.

The Vault Hunters looked between them. "No one said there were going to be riddles," Salvador growled.

"Everybody just think for a moment," Maya whispered.

Suddenly, Zero asked, "Are you asleep?"

"Close enough," they heard. "I would also accept: are you dead."

They looked up, watched a figure appear on a balcony atop the stone spire. She leaned on the railing, staring down at them. From the distance, Axton couldn't get a clear look at her. The sun sat behind her, covering any distinguishing characteristics in shadow. Maya tried to shield her eyes to see.

"Been a long time since I've had visitors," she said, this time, they heard her voice echo down from where she stood. A distant, loud sound. "What's your name?"

They looked between each other, unsure if it was the question Lilith had given them the response to, or if they were supposed to respond with their actual names. Axton heard Salvador open his mouth and he took a breath. "I don't remember," Salvador replied.

The woman above them chuckled, a short, sound that was certainly accompanied by a grin that they couldn't see for shadows. "You look like you wouldn't remember," she mocked and then added, "Come on up."

Caution followed them to the steps. Yet, as they took the long walk to the top, it dawned on Axton that it wouldn't matter if the woman at the top had intended to kill them. She could have done it once for every flight they had made their way up. It zigzagged. A bullet down or just a grenade would have sent them sky-high and back down in plenty of pieces. Not to mention, he was sure the stairs weren't her only way up or down.

Reaching the top, Salvador set hands on his knees and bent over. "Ever. Think. Of. An. Elevator?" he gasped. He wasn't the only one winded, but Zero, though he had taken the same steps up, hid his fatigue better than the others. He stood still, breathing with only the slightest quickness to his pulse.

"Sup?" they heard and looked up to see the owner of the house atop the stone spire. The one whom had put fear into Scooter and Ellie. The one Lilith had sent them to find.

She wasn't very impressive. Sera; who shot the balls off a mouse at four-hundred yards.

She sat in the far corner of the balcony on a faded blue lawn chair in a plaid red shirt and her underwear. In her left hand she held a glass of lemonade, and at her right sat a little table, a Maliwan pistol upon it and her hand resting on the trigger. She was, slim, feminine, her skin tanned by the Pandoran sun. Her hair was dark blonde, a light brown, colored with lengths of blood red and shining royal blue strands. It sat tied back, flipped over her shoulder. Her feet were bare, her legs smooth, her lips chapped.

It was then that Axton spotted the pair of rifles beside her seat. One was mud brown with a scope. The other was pure white, even sitting in the shadows it almost seemed to gleam, but this one had no scope.

"Who sent you?" she asked, hand so finely relaxed upon her pistol. Maya watched her cautiously, she tried to judge if she could phaselock the woman before she could be killed.

"Lilith," Axton said.

"Lilith?" she replied, staring him down with the greenest eyes he had ever seen. Sharp, considering. "What for?"

"Didn't say," Maya replied.

"Well," Sera said, sitting forward quick enough that it caused alarm in the Vault Hunters and they raised weapons. Sera looked back at them. "Put your guns down, you bunch of ingrates," she grumbled as she rose to her feet, taking her glass of lemonade and her pistol with her as she stepped with quiet feet into the house. "Hurry up and get in here," she called behind her.

As they filed into the house atop the stone spire, the scent of warm food caught their noses and Salvador's stomach was the first to growl. "Help yourselves," Sera told them. "Ain't much. Like I said, wasn't expecting visitors that I wasn't going to have to shoot." She paused and added, "It's rakk. But I think I finally managed to cook the gamey taste out of it." She shrugged and stepped out of the room.

When she returned, she still wore the red plaid shirt, but now pair of nearly-ruined khaki shorts sat on her lower body. It wasn't appealing dress, but it was understandable for someone to be comfortable in their own home. "Haven't heard from Lilith in a few years. What's new?" she questioned as the Vault Hunters ate the warm rakk steaks and potatoes.

Between bites, Axton filled her in. She knew of Handsome Jack and his danger to Pandora. She knew of Roland's Crimson Raiders. Lilith the Firehawk. And then Axton's story came to Mordecai. Came to the events of the Preservation. Across the small room, he watched her still. Watched her hand grip to the back of the chair that Zero sat upon. He could see anger rising in her green eyes, and then, with a blink, it was gone.

"Bloodwing?" she asked.

He told her how it ended. Jack's testing. Left no detail out. Her hand raised to her mouth as if quelling sickness that raised from her gut. She settled herself with the barest shifting on her feet. Then she shook her head, a smile raising on her lips but it was anywhere near pleasant. "Something wrong?" Axton questioned.

"Just thinking," she replied. "Say, are we headed straight back to Sanctuary?"

"Mordecai asked us to hit up a few bandit caravans hauling booze," Maya told her.

"When we grabbed the first one on the way out here, Moxxi contacted us and said she'd give us a pistol if we gave the barrels to her," Salvador added, "then her and Mordecai got into an argument and he said he'd give us a sniper rifle if we took it to him." At the mention of Moxxi, the other Vault Hunters stared at Salvador.

Crossing her arms beneath her small breasts, Sera said, "Give it to Mordecai and I'll let you each take something from my armory." When they turned on her, waiting for her to continue, she said, "Now, I do this on good faith that the barrels go to Mordecai. Turn and give it to Moxxi and I'll take those same weapons out of your hands and shoot you with them. Do you understand?" Her words were level, promising.

Axton grinned. Salvador eyed her suspiciously. Zero was quiet with her at his back. Maya said, "First, let's see what you've got."

Sera turned and strode away, into a room where she called back, "This way. Elevator's not meant for so many so expect a tight squeeze."

"You did have an elevator!" Salvador grumbled.

The Vault Hunters followed her around the corner packed into the a single elevator car that would fit perhaps three comfortably.

The elevator descended slowly, quietly, the only light a little bulb above them. Time passed slowly as the box crept downward. And then it opened into a warehouse. Axton's jaw dropped at the sight of crates upon crates, boxes upon boxes. "All weapons?" he asked.

"Need a map?" Sera questioned. Behind her came a soft chuckle from Zero. "Weapons to the right, she said, "Other stuff to the left."

"All this and we get one thing a piece?" Salvador questioned.

"Don't get greedy, Big Man," Sera told him.

The Vault Hunters stepped into the room. Sera took a seat upon the stairs that led down to the warehouse floor. She watched them wander about, open a crate. They picked up weapons, set them down, moved about, scouring for something better. Mounted on the wall, high on the right side of the room, lay a rose-red sniper rifle, a long scope, a long barrel. Pristine, she sat, as if never fired.

"This one special?" Maya asked.

"I can't give you that one," Sera replied. "She's meant for somebody."

"The bullet or the gun?" Zero asked. Their host only smiled, a look that was not pleasant, but caught in thought, turning to a grimace.

"How about this," Sera suddenly called, drawing their attention, changing the subject. "If you hold your end of the deal, the booze goes to Mordecai, you can take whatever you can carry."

They were quick to respond with, "Deal!"

Stocked with new weapons, full to capacity with ammunition. Sera led them out through the ground-level exit. "Gimme a moment to get ready," she said. "I'll meet you at the bone-wall."

The walk back to the runner was full of smiles. "I thought she was supposed to be scary," Salvador scoffed as they came to stand by the vehicle. Axton hopped behind the wheel and pulled it back over the skeletons. It was there the others came to stand by him and a cloud of sand began to fill the sky, approaching from the stone pillar that was Sera's home.

At the head of the sand cloud was a two-wheeled vehicle. The long motorcycle came shattering over old skulls and stopped outside the line. Sera sat up upon the machine, a pair of dark-lens goggles over her eyes. No longer did she wear the sparse clothes of someone relaxing at home, but a uniform so similar to what all Vault Hunters seemed to wear. Oranges, browns, reds. She wore a long red scarf about her nose and mouth, around her neck. A sleeveless top of thick leather sat over her torso, ending where a pair of sun-bleached brown cargo pants began. Pockets lined from hip to ankle, each full of ammunition. The leather boots on her feet were cracked, worn from years in the Pandoran sands. On her hands, up to her elbows, were thick leather gloves that matching her boots, aged and soft.

Turning, she held out her arm and clicked a button in her hand. The world seemed to hum around them before a bright blue shield came from the rock tower and settled just in front of the skeleton wall. "You'd be surprised," she began to say, "how many of them still try and get through that shield."

"Build it yourself?" Axton questioned, assuming she had.

"On a work-trade with a friend named Tina," she replied. When she saw the Vault Hunters glance between themselves with a smile, she asked, "know her?"

"How'd that deal work out for you?" Maya grinned.

"Badass people-melting shield around my house and tea parties twice a month?" Sera shrugged. "No biggie." Straightening the scarf over her mouth and nose, she glanced to the Vault Hunters and said, "I'll meet you at Ellie's when you're done with your other business."

"Booze run!" Salvador said with excitement.

"Remember your deal," Sera told him, any friendly tones from before now vanishing.

Understanding rang through the Vault Hunters. Sera was only accommodating if her rules were followed. A deal was a deal. And they were certain that if they turned on their deal with Sera, they might not live to reap any benefits from it. If there were any. Axton wondered, if they kept their deal, if they followed through, built a partnership with the woman who had a warehouse beneath her home and was willing to share, she might let them back in. There were a few other things he had to part with, nice guns, maybe he could get them next time if he played his cards right.

She sped away on her motorcycle, laying low against the frame, almost as if she were a part of the bike, one large wheel in front of her, one large wheel behind, a cloud of dust quickly obscuring her from view.

When they caught up to her, her bike was gone as she leaned against the Fast Travel device. Upon her back lay a long brown sniper rifle, creating an "x" across it was the white rifle without a scope. At her left hip sat a red repeater, at her right, a small dark-green Tediore SMG. Ellie was nowhere to be seen.

Goggles pushed atop her head, Sera approached them as they stepped out of the runner. "Sanctuary?" she questioned.

"Where's Ellie?" Maya asked.

"Inside?" Sera replied, brow raised. "We had a civilized conversation, you know, like normal people, before you guys arrived."

"We need to go to Thousand Cuts before Sanctuary," Axton told her.

Sera stood up straight, interested. "Thousand Cuts?" she repeated. Then, her excitement retreated. "Mind if I tag along?" she questioned seriously. "The Slabs out that way get a little stupid."

"You know their leader?" Salvador asked.

"We go way back," she replied with a smile, charming, beaming.

"You seem much too excited," Axton observed.

"Dust is lonely," she told him, "besides, I haven't been to Thousand Cuts in a good long while. It'd be nice to see what they did with the place." She paused and then added, "Unless they finally managed to blow themselves up... then I guess it'd be kinda boring."

Thousand Cuts was just like Sera remembered. The Vault Hunters could hear her laughing from somewhere above them as she provided cover fire against the Slabs that tried to prevent them from reaching their king.

When the king of the Slabs stepped down from his throne before the new Vault Hunters and revealed his true self, Brick, as himself, welcomed his new, honorary Slabs to the family. Axton looked among his fellow Vault Hunters and then asked Maya, "Where'd she go?"

Zero made a slight motion to the second floor, drawing everyone's attention to where Sera stood, leaning forward against the railing as a dead psycho fell to the bottom floor. She looked to Brick, and smiled. "Sup, Asshole."

Brick held his arms out wide. "SERA!" he shouted, his voice echoing. Flipping over the railing, she dropped to the floor with as much grace as someone jumping from the second story of a building could have. She strode toward him with brisk steps and before she could evade, Brick grabbed her in a tight embrace. When he let her go, he said, "What are you doing here?"

She motioned towards the new Vault Hunters and Maya held out a letter. Brick took it, read through it, laughed. "To Sanctuary?" Sera asked Brick.

"To Sanctuary," he replied. Then as they began to leave his kingdom behind, the Vault Hunters at their heels, Brick looked down past his heavy shoulder and asked, "Happy reunion?"

"Not for me," she told him. "I've still got a chip on my shoulder the size of that Rakk Hive from five years ago."

He grunted and then said, "Remember when you shot it in the ass?"

She had a brief pause in step and then continued at his side, grinning, "And it diarrhea'd all over Roland?" she chuckled.

They laughed all the way to Sanctuary. Suddenly, to them, at least for the time being, the new Vault Hunters didn't exist. And then, the arrival on the floating city brought reality crashing back. As everyone began to head toward the Crimson Raiders' Headquarters, Sera paused.

Turning, Maya asked, "Everything okay?"

"Yea," Sera said briskly. "Yeah." She followed around the road, citizens watching Salvador and Axton carrying barrels of alcohol towards the Headquarters. Walking inside, Dr. Patricia Tannis looked up from her work, stared at them. Sera stared back. Tannis said nothing.

Up the stairs, the Vault Hunters set the barrels in the small room adjacent to the strategy room. When they entered, Brick stepped out to the balcony to speak with Roland. Axton stepped forward to tell Mordecai that his booze was in the back room.

And then it happened.

Lilith saw her request granted, saw Sera standing in the doorway with Zero at her side. She wanted to greet her with open arms, but saw the look on her face, paranoia, stress, unease. Suddenly, the look was gone, replaced by confidence, a mischievous smile. "Sera?" Lilith heard and her attention darted across the room to where Mordecai stood apart from Axton, moving forward.

"Mordecai," Sera replied, attractively smirking as if she were keeping a secret while slowly pulling at the fingers of her gloves, removing them and tucking them into the waistband of her pants. She brought her green eyes up to Mordecai and the whole room stilled. Lilith winced, waiting for the explosion, holding her breath.

Roland looked through the doorway to where Sera stood, his attention shot back to Brick who grinned broadly as if everything were a grand joke. The new Vault Hunters simply remained where they stood, stuck in their places. It was quickly becoming evident that there was a story here that they were all unaware of.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Other Sniper**

**Chapter Two  
**

Lilith found the air thick in her lungs, hard to breathe for the tension that settled between Sniper A and Sniper B was thick and tangible enough to take a shot at. Then, Sera leaned to her left, looking past Mordecai to the balcony where Brick and Roland stood. "Hey there Fearless Leader," she addressed the leader of the Crimson Raiders with a less-than-amicable grin, Mordecai quickly fading into the background of her attention.

"Surprised you're here, Sera," Roland said evenly, stepping into the room.

"Brick's invited to the Let's Kill Jack party and I'm not?" she replied. Setting a hand at her hip, she added, "Besides, I think us two crazies work well together... or at least we did a few years ago." She glanced to Brick and he continued smiling, too amused with the possibility of a fight than with what she was actually saying.

Roland glanced to the mammoth Brick, assuming it had been the berserker whom had brought the other sniper to Sanctuary. And then, he returned his attention to Sera and asked, "Have you been to see your father yet?"

The explosion Lilith had been waiting for began to surface. Sera's brows furrowed, she grimaced, and then her voice came harsh as a warning, "Don't start that shit, Roland." The old Vault Hunters were ill at ease. They knew what a name meant. Sera never used names, always made them up. To say a name was to show her displeasure, her anger. It was why she never asked names. It was not in her to hate indiscriminately. Her anger was earned and deserved, and not easily so.

"Easy, Sera," Lilith found herself saying, stepping forward to set a hand at the back of Sera's shoulder. Quickly, at the touch of what was not flesh, she withdrew. Sera's brief shift of attention was all the asking Lilith needed to not say a word. Turning to Roland, the red-haired Siren said, "Everybody just needs to calm down. We're fighting Jack, remember? Not picking up where we left off."

"Trust me," Sera grumbled, "I have no intention of picking up where I left off."

Roland crossed the room to stand before her. He looked down at her, as a commander would a solder, stern eyes, an expression he would have given to one of his Crimson Raiders, or perhaps a look that reached back into his history as part of the Crimson Lance. "Then what are you here for, Sera?" he questioned.

Calmly, Sera stared back at him. Lilith expected the worst. Five years ago, at the start of their journey to the Vault, she had been much different. The sniper from the Dust had been waiting for them the moment they stepped off the bus outside Fyrestone. They had assumed she was just one of the locals, as the Claptrap had introduced them. "This is Sera!" the little robot had said, "Say hello, Sera."

She had been quiet then, plain in sand-stained white and tight leather pants. Her skin was tanned, her hair bleached from the outdoors. She didn't offer her hand, only stood in the shade of a rickety shack, shielded from view of where the bus had dropped them off. Had it not been for the Claptrap, they might not have noticed her.

Sera didn't offer a hand only revered them as if they were dangerous, glanced them over, admired their weapons. "Got a deal for you Vault Hunters," she said softly. The Claptrap filled the following silence with beat-boxing a few feet away. "I've got a weapons cache in town. You let me come with you to the Vault, and you can help yourselves."

Sera had always had an impressive stock of firearms. Not only in Fyrestone, but also hidden in high traffic areas around Pandora, along the way to the Vault. Lilith had always thought of it as the sniper marking her path toward the Vault, as far as she had gotten, but it didn't reach to the end. When the road turned to ice and snow, Sera paused, admitting, "This is as far as I've ever come."

"Going to stop now?" Roland had asked.

Shaking her head, she replied, "No. I have to see what's in there."

"There's a man out there," Sera said, her voice bringing Lilith back to the present, out of the good-old days. "A man that I have every intention of disemboweling and turning into a goddamn puppet." She was speaking smoothly, no spark of hatred in the sniper from the Dust for the soldier before her. They had always appeared as two opposing view points. Sera refused to follow, not only Roland, but anyone. If she went along, it was by her own decision, and that alone.

Roland eyed her with consideration, waiting for her to continue, and when she said, "So I'll listen, for a little while. Since you've got a better chance at finding him than I do," he didn't know what to say. For the time being, they were no longer at odds. She could use the strength of the Vault Hunters and the Crimson Raiders. He could use her knowledge of Pandora. There was no telling what else she had come to know since her departure years ago, the same time Brick had left, long after Mordecai had set out on his own.

"We could use another set of capable hands," Lilith said excitedly when it seemed Roland would say nothing.

Maya leaned over to speak to the red-haired Siren and asked, "What exactly is going on?"

"Sera decided against a pissing match with Roland," Lilith commented, and when the other sniper glanced back to her with narrowed green eyes, the Sirens smiled.

Mordecai opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced as Sera and Roland shook hands. "Welcome back to the team," Roland told her.

"Now that we've got the band back together..." Sera muttered with a smirk. She then glanced to Lilith and said, "Hey, wanna show me to someone who can feed me? … In a direction I can avoid the obvious?"

A flying city was difficult to get lost in. There weren't many streets, and Sanctuary hadn't been very large from the start; only everyone packed on top of each other. There was a lady who invited them in for a meal. When Lilith and Sera took a seat at the little wooden table out of the woman's way, Lilith said, "Scooter's garage is just down the way if you want to stop in for a visit."

Sera grimaced and then brightened suddenly. "I do have something to ask him," she mused. When the Siren looked to her with a intrigue, the sniper replied, "Car question."

Leaning forward, setting elbows on the table, Lilith brushed a strand of hair from her eyes and said, "It's good to see you. No one had heard from you, I actually figured you had died somewhere."

"Thanks for your vote of confidence, Lil," the sniper muttered, rolling her eyes. "I don't die that easy. If Mordecai doesn't have liver failure yet, I should outlive him just fine."

"Speaking of Mordecai," Lilith spoke up.

"Let's not?" Sera sighed. "Blondie told me about Blood. That's why I'm here."

"Blondie?" Lilith mused. "Axton?" She chuckled. Sera shrugged. "On a serious note," the Siren continued.

"Why you sent those new Vault Hunters to find me?" the sniper finished.

"He could really use you right now," Lilith told her.

"Bah! Lil!"

"He just lost his best friend. He could use an old one."

Crossing her arms over her chest, Sera grumbled, "Then he can go get comfort from Moxxi like he did last time."

"I still don't know what happened."

Sera shrugged, "I'm not about to share."

"He didn't either."

Reaching back, rubbing at her left shoulder, Sera muttered, "Look, I don't plan on staying at Headquarters the whole time. I'll be out running with the Vault Hunters."

"Come on, Sera," Lilith pleaded, "you hardly know them."

"I know the Ninja fairly well," Sera replied simply.

"The Nin—Zero?" Lilith questioned. "What?"

Reaching back, Sera tapped at a metal plate that sat at her left shoulder blade. "Gave me that a few years ago," she replied. "Was hired by somebody to take me out as a way of getting at my old man. Shattered my shoulder before I could convince him it was a waste since, as we all know, if I died, Pops would just... well, keep doing what he's doing and not give a rat's ass."

"So... you have a metal plate sticking out of your skin?"

"Zed doesn't have a medical license," Sera laughed. "It's a patch job, but hey, the only problems I have are in the snow."

"You let Zed operate on you?"

"Better than Dr. Ned," the sniper commented. The memories from the Zombie Island of Dr. Ned were quick to resurface. Claptrap on Claptrap violence, the walking dead, wereskags and a psychotic doctor with a fancy med-school degree chopping up bodies and playing mad-scientist.

"Speaking of which," Lilith interrupted her own thoughts from the walking corpses... the reanimated body of T.K. Baha that vomited weapons when they brought brains for him to eat. He did enjoy those brains. "Where'd you disappear to after that?"

"Remember those rotten eggs Marcus had us collect in Jakobs Cove?" Sera questioned, when the woman across from her nodded, she continued, "I did a little research. Trying to find out why Mordecai's famous wanted poster says he is in possession of an endangered species. Took some of those rotten eggs we had left over, hunted down a few Trash Feeders and went to Tannis to compare notes."

"Bloodwing was a Trash Feeder?"

"Tannis and I named them _Archaeopteryx_ _pandorus_. There is a small subspecies differing in size and color and that is _Archaeopteryx_ _pandorus bloodwing. _Endangered, but apparently no scientific name... Trash Feeders have a much wider breeding ground, which is why the bastards are everywhere. The subspecies, however, makes their home on and around Jakobs Cove. And with it all zombied, there weren't too many of them left. Tannis and I have been working on relocation and restoration breeding for the past five-ish years."

Lilith stared. Then she shook her head. "I keep forgetting you went to school." Changing the subject, she asked, "How's it been working with Tannis?"

"We don't talk much. At all."

"Threatened to shoot her?"

"Only a little bit." Crossing her arms upon the table and leaning forward, the sniper stretched her back and added, "and with Handsome Jack killing everybody, Tannis is stuck in Sanctuary and I can't get out to the restoration grounds without back-up."

"Hopefully we'll fix that soon," Lilith sighed.

After eating, only a light meal of seasoned skag meat, since vegetables were difficult to grow on a floating city, the two women left the house of their host and, outside, Lilith asked, "Did you still want to stop by Scooter's?"

"Is there a way I can get in without him seeing me?"

"He's going to piss himself."

The top door was noisy, Lilith knew that. The metal needed a good oiling, and it squeaked like crazy when moved. The option before them was the garage door. Lilith kept her distance, watched as Sera slipped just inside and leaned against the corner of a metal beam. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, appeared amused, and waited. It didn't take long. Lilith peeked inside to see Scooter, crossing from one side of his building to another, and then he paused, snapping his attention up with wild eyes, taking in the frame of the sniper that watched him with ease. Everything in his hands fell, clattering to the floor with such a noise that Sera winced slightly, seemed perturbed.

Scooter's mouth fell agape. For a length of time, none moved, spoke, Lilith wasn't sure if Scooter even breathed. Then he stuttered, "S—S—Sera?"

"Hey Scoot," the sniper said and stood up straight. "I've got a favor to ask."

Somewhere in him, his courage surfaced again and he scowled. "Well ask it somewhere else," he spat back. "I ain't doin' nothin' for you."

Sera shrugged, "Oh well, guess that just means Ellie is still cooler than you are."

"Now hold on a dang minute!" Scooter called.

Hands at her hips, bowing her head as if dismayed, the sniper said, "Ellie put my bike into the Catch-A-Ride system. I'll just go ask her for another favor."

"That's what that junk was?" Scooter laughed.

"Junk?" Sera stared. "At least it shifts gears like it's supposed to instead of your cars sounding like they're red-lining."

He stopped, scowled. "Whatchu want, Sera?"

"Vault Hunters were driving. Put a standard transmission in those junk cars of yours. And fix those runners so we're not fishtailing everywhere or spinning out with bandits on our asses."

"My cars are fine!" Scooter hollered.

Sera crossed the distance between where she stood and where he desperately tried to hold his own and said, "Scoot. Are you a mechanic, or a puss?" He stood shock still, staring back at her. "Fix the cars."

Scooter going to work, Sera returned outside with Lilith. "Might've crapped himself," the sniper told her, wrinkling her nose, "or that just might be the way he smells."

"Your are such a bully," Lilith chuckled.

"You're just realizing this now? It's in my genes, just look at my old man."

Lilith couldn't help the laughter that came forth. It was good to laugh. There wasn't much occasion lately, nor was there time. She wondered briefly if the sniper's intention was truly to make her laugh. A moment of thought away from the pending destruction caused by Handsome Jack was rare, but at least it was pleasant enough to cause a smile.

In conversation, they returned to the Crimson Raider Headquarters. Topics bounced back and forth, ranged from everything, but was nothing important, nothing of pressing information or serious thought. As they passed through the door, Tannis looked up from her work. "Sera," she addressed the sniper in a sharp tone. Sera froze in step, shoulders drawn up as if she were a child caught sneaking in the house after curfew. "The nesting grounds," Tannis said, "Jack's road construction is getting awfully close."

"Think of it this way," Sera replied, "If we don't kill him, it's not going to matter."

"Here," Tannis said crisply, striding over with quick steps and sharp taps of her heels on the floor. She handed a sheet of paper to Sera and then walked away.

"Thanks," was all Sera said as she ascended the stairs with Lilith at her side. The red-haired Siren made a sound of questioning and Sera explained, "Tannis' last report from the bloodwing breeding grounds. As long as we kill Jack and keep him from destroying it, there's a good chance of a comeback." She paused in step at the top of the landing and then looked to the woman beside her. "You know, we have to kill him for other reasons too..."

"Of course," Lilith smirked. In the small room before the central base of strategy, Mordecai sat upon a tapped barrel of alcohol. The Siren noticed him, saw his attention slide to the other sniper, but Sera was again so engrossed in Tannis' report that her gaze never wavered from the sheet in her hands.

"Anything important?" Roland asked as they stepped into the room.

Sera glanced up, looked about to see the new Vault Hunters had departed. "Shit," she grumbled. "I wanted to go with them."

"I sent them to Thousand Cuts," Brick said, coming in from the balcony, "They'll be back."

Shaking her head, Sera then said, "And who let him start drinking?" obviously a little louder than she intended as she shifted uncomfortably after her words.

"He shoots better when he's been drinking," Brick defended.

Sera scoffed. "Yeah, okay. Same excuse," she grumbled, and strode out to the balcony, putting the greatest amount of distance between herself and Mordecai.

Standing before Roland, Lilith glanced from Sniper A to Sniper B. "You sent for her, didn't you?" Roland asked.

"So what," she shrugged, "I'm meddling."

"I thought it was Brick. Figured they'd kept in touch after..."

"After you called them psychopaths?"

"Yeah..." Roland sighed. "I'm just not so sure that was a good idea."

"Calling unstable people psychopaths?" Lilith questioned jokingly.

He smirked, shook his head. "Bringing Sera back."

"We need all the help we can get, Roland," the Siren sighed. "And besides, she said she wasn't trying to pick up where everything left off. It's over, right?" She shrugged, looked to where Brick stood and said, "And I think the new Vault Hunters could use someone covering their asses, don't you?"

Brick was caught unaware, unsure if the question was directed at him or to Roland but he didn't let the thought sink in before saying, "Let Sera blow some faces off. Keeps her happy."

Night settled in. When Brick took to a bed and Mordecai, Lilith, and Roland sought out the rest of the floating city, Sera eased in from the balcony and coiled upon the broken, yellow couch in the anteroom. Both rooms were warm with computers all around creating heat. Setting her weapons about the couch in easy reach, she lay flat upon her back, setting the crook of her arm over her eyes and, in the comfort of silence, she let herself fall asleep.

Footsteps in the dark room made Sera stir. Mordecai entered, heading to the bunk above Brick. He paused in the motion of pushing himself to the top bed when she rolled to her side, curling upon the couch, drawing his attention. Reaching out, he pulled the blanket from his bed and stepped towards her, draping it over her legs.

Hopping up to his bunk, he risked one more look in her direction before settling in for the night. He wasn't stupid. He knew she was awake, watching him with caution as if it were the first day they met in Fyrestone. She had heard him enter the room and he knew, the stirring she had done, was consideration of reaching for a gun. He wondered if she hesitated and decided not to shoot him. She could have called it an accident, like he had, even though his shot that day so few years ago had not been intentional.

He was awake for some time, hands tucked behind his head, before he realized he wasn't about to fall asleep. Setting his feet upon the floor, he moved through the room taking up a full bottle of booze, passing computers to the balcony where he stood, breathing in the cool night air.

Sera's words echoed in his mind. Same excuse, she had said to Brick. _Same excuse_. Was it an excuse? Bloodwing was gone. Murdered. Did he need an excuse to drink? He shot better when drinking, he knew he did. And then, her voice was there in his mind again. "Yeah, you shoot better when you're drinking than when you're not shooting at all." He groaned. When did she get in his head again.

Alone, with his thoughts, they ran away with him. The three of them, Sera, Bloodwing, himself. They were the trio. After the Vault, the three of them were nearly inseparable. Bandits feared them. Called them Death. And now Bloodwing was gone. Sera was gone. Mordecai stood alone and knew, that if Sera heard that the reason Handsome Jack had been able to conduct tests on Bloodwing, that it was because she had been taken by Jack's men, Sera would blame him. Handsome Jack was the man Sera sought revenge against but Mordecai would become in her mind the sole reason Bloodwing had been taken. She would blame it on his drinking, blame it on his incompetence as a fighter, a sniper, a man.

He gripped the bottle in his hand, gripped it tight. He raised it to his lips and frowned when nothing poured down his throat. The bottle was empty. It was gone, drank so quickly during his thoughts that he didn't even remember. Everything in his head screamed at him that it was his fault. Sera's voice kept telling him he was a drunken waste.

Drawing back, he hefted the bottle against the wall, glass erupting, shattering with a crash. His fists remained tight, his teeth clenched. Shoulders shaking. Suddenly, Mordecai felt eyes at his back, raising tightness between his shoulders. Sliding a foot back, he turned, only a little, glancing back to see Sera standing in the distance, at the doorway to the room she had been sleeping in. The florescent lighting above her cast in odd angles at her face.

Hand at the door frame, she watched him in silence. Considering him. "Leave me alone, Sera," he growled, not willing to take her accusing words. He was glad he could not see her face, the sharp green of her eyes boring holes into him, through him.

She turned away, her back to him and turned off the light before he heard her drop down to the couch once again. He stared at the darkened room where her figure had vanished. He knew what she would say. Sera would smirk and shake her head ever so slightly. "It's all in your head, dumbass," she would say, "You're arguing with yourself... again."

He shook his head. Sera was right, again, as always.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Other Sniper**

**Chapter Three  
**

"Hey you," a happy voice slid into Mordecai's tired mind. The sun shone brightly into the room. The smell of old blood seemed long gone, cleaned out and scrubbed. His bed lay flat on the floor, but it was clean, a soft mattress taken from barracks belonging to Atlas soldiers dispersed after the death of Commandant Steele and the opening of the Vault.

"Hey," he heard again, opening his eyes, so tired. The cry of a bird, one so familiar, brought him to sit up. Bloodwing sat upon a perch, stretching her wings back. "Are you going to sleep all day?" he heard, and glanced across the room to where Sera stood, long soft hair draped over her shoulders, clashing with the black of the sleeveless shirt that exposed the toned skin of her stomach. She was again in her underwear, her legs long and smooth. She kept clean for him, as clean as Pandoran sandstorms and trouble with consistent running water would allow. He didn't care and often times, he found her at her best covered in mud and sweat, smelling of sweet gunfire. Maybe, he sometimes thought, keeping clean was a way to keep him away, rather than draw him in. They were, he remembered, often inseparable when it came down to to bare flesh.

His gaze started from her feet, slid up the lean frame of her body that his gun-calloused hands had held tightly for so many nights since they had settled in the tower near the Tundra Express. "Yeah," he said to her, "I'm going to stay in bed all day."

"All day?" she repeated, feigning offense. She had plans for the morning, he knew that. Sera always had plans for the morning. Asleep after him, awake before him. He found her so often staring out windows at night when he rolled over and found her gone from his side. Bloodwing would sit at her shoulder as if she were hers and not his. Once, he felt a pang of jealousy rising in his gut, but when he sat up in bed, Bloodwing abandoned Sera in favor of him and the feeling easily subsided, never surfacing again.

Crossing the distance to him, Sera dropped to her knees upon the bed. She crawled, slowly, her body hovering above his as she came to stop before him. "Can I join you?" she asked softly. Leaning in, she reached out, taking his goatee in her fingers and pulling him close, her lips bare centimeters from his. "It's cold outside."

A hard blow suddenly came to his legs and he bolted upright, sitting up, heart pounding in his chest. The sun shown warm on his face, his skin hot as he looked up to find Brick standing nearby, staring down at him. "What the hell are you doing out here?" Brick asked with laughter in his voice.

The sun was high, too high for early morning, not high enough for noon-time. With a groan, he pushed himself to his feet. Still out on the balcony. He didn't even remember falling asleep, only Sera watching him from the shadows after the blurry memory of breaking a bottle. Across from him, the remnants remained, shards of glass glittering in the light. "Where's Sera?" Mordecai asked.

Walking away, back inside, Brick replied, "Dunno."

"Did the Vault Hunters come back yet?"

"Nope. Not yet."

Turning, the sniper looked out about the city. It was just a dream. A memory. After the Vault, before they had found themselves on the Zombie Island of Doctor Ned, he and Sera branched out together. The following months, they became Death. They traveled, searching for nothing and everything, the next big hit. Loot that the Vault was rumored to have but had none. There had to be something on Pandora. "I like this place," Sera said after cleaning out the tower at the Tundra Express, burning varkids and bandits with an elemental Vladof pistol at close range.

"This place?" Mordecai laughed. "And the snow?"

"Guess we'd just have to find a way to keep warm," she shrugged, her words so casual he almost hadn't caught the meaning as she strode away from him, increasing her stride as she made her way to the tower, into it, up to the very top.

Before him, down in Sanctuary, he heard Lilith calling up to him. "Is Roland back yet?"

"No," he found himself saying quickly, "Why?"

"Said he had to talk with Sera but he couldn't find her," Lilith replied. "Haven't seen her either, have you?"

"Not since last night," Mordecai said plain-faced, not letting on a feeling or thought. "She was crashed on the couch when I came back."

"Thought she was sticking around this time," Lilith muttered, striding away.

Behind him, Brick chuckled, a heavy sound of humor.

"You know something we don't?" Mordecai grumbled over his shoulder.

"Ain't you supposed to know her better than the rest of us?" the berserker grinned as he returned to his bunk. It still seemed too early to be awake.

Mordecai stared. He thought of Sera staring back at him in the dark. In his stupor, he had seen her gaze as accusing, seen the shadows across her face and thought her coming to watch him fall to pieces, to blame him for his own loss of hope and mind. Now, as he looked back to the doorway Brick had passed through, to the place she had stood so quietly with the light behind her, he wondered if she had only just woken to the noise, or woken as she used to during those many nights at the tower, for no apparent reason. She often said, "I'm cold," when he awoke, seeing her staring out the window at the varkid-infested lands. "I can't sleep when it's cold."

He knew well enough and would reply, "You chose it."

"For a reason," she told him and would grasp his hand in hers, entwining their fingers. Never had he been one for romantic gestures, but he let it happen since it never lasted long. It was almost as if she remembered suddenly where she was, what she was doing, and wrench her hand from his as if her flesh burned at his touch. "Sap," she would say, and he never knew if she referred to him or herself, but she would slip a finger into a beltloop on his pants and lead him back to bed. Shut him up before he could ever ask any questions.

"Where's everyone off to?" he heard from behind him and turned to see Axton and the new Vault Hunters striding into the room.

"They're around," Mordecai replied.

"Sera here?" Maya asked, "I know she wanted to go with us last time."

"Took off," the sniper said and then added, "Hey, I got a favor..."

The Vault Hunters listened to a story about Mordecai's cache of stolen weapons, agreed to the mission, and then departed once again. "Gotta restock," Axton said, shouldering a Tediore rocket launcher that had become his new best friend. At the reload, the weapon itself became a great explosion and the Pandora-wide digistruct would form it back in his hands. No need to reload. It was the perfect weapon.

They made their way to Marcus' shop. At seeing the Vault Hunters, Marcus Kincaid, round and wealthy greeted them with open arms from behind the bars that divided him from them. "Welcome Vault Hunters," he said with his accented voice, smiling.

"You don't have to do that every time," Maya told him as she stepped up to the vending machine full of ammunition, paid her money and pressed each button of stock until her pockets were full of rounds, magazines, and clips.

Marcus ignored her, caught up with the impressive weapon upon Axton's shoulder. "Very fine," he admired.

"Not for sale," Axton replied, waiting his turn as Salvador searched through the stock of new weapons that the arms dealer had available.

"Everything has a price, my friend," Marcus chuckled.

Stepping back from the ammunition-dispensing vending machine, Maya let Zero take his turn and then leaned upon it. "That doesn't make sense, you know," she said, "Why would she wait until now to take off. Shouldn't she have come to find us the first day?"

"You're over-thinking it," Axton told her, keeping his eyes focused elsewhere.

Zero remained quiet as Salvador said, "She's a crazy woman. They don't make sense. None of the whole lot."

Maya chuckled.

"Hm?" Marcus leaned forward. "Which crazy woman? The town is full of them," he clucked.

"Lilith's friend," Axton replied, lifting a small Bandit pistol and setting it back down with disinterest. "Sera."

"Sera..." Marcus growled, "Sera. That little bitch is back?"

Axton stilled. "Way to go, Commando," Maya sighed.

Across town, Lilith waited in the small hub, sitting atop a locked, golden weapons chest, her legs crossed at her knees. She heard a sudden pop in the air and then the words of a continued conversation from across the world. "—do you?" Roland's voice, the end of a question.

"Don't worry about it," Sera told him with a smile, she was unclean, stained in browns and reds with mud caked on her boots. Her long hair, no longer soft strands the old Vault Hunters remembered from their time together as a team, before the Vault, but turned to dreaded locks from her time alone in the Dust, was tied back. A few singular loose strands stuck to her face and neck with sweat and the mess that spattered back from a close range bullet. Lilith had noticed before upon seeing her the first time, but didn't want to ask the reason why she had let it go to dreads, the red and blue strands among her natural color. She wondered, however, in the back of her mind, if it were because the sniper no longer caring for her appearance after she and Mordecai had separated, or if it had been Sera taking on specific traits of the one she cared for and lost. Then again, it just could've been Sera being Sera. Sometimes, things just happened, and when it came to the sniper striding beside Roland, coming from wherever, there didn't have to be a reason. It just happened.

Suddenly Sera looked up and saw Lilith, her smile brightening. "Howdy, Lil," she beamed, waving like an excited child. Adjusting a pack on her shoulder, she approached the Siren and said, "Were you waiting for me? I feel so important."

Glancing between the two before her, Lilith muttered, "You two seem at ease." She kept her thoughts to the back of her mind, trying to ease the complicated situation away. It would only make her wonder again about the two snipers. She only knew it had to have been something unforgivable by Sera's standards for it to never be spoken of again. And yet, when asked, both involved would laugh, shrugging it off as if what had happened were a joke, nothing serious. Lilith had always suspected differently.

Sera and Roland glanced between each other and Sera lifted her leg, taking a stiff, exaggerated step away from the leader of the Crimson Raiders. "We're not agreeing on anything, honest," she told the Siren, "We're still bitter rivals, hell bent on forcing our views upon the other."

"Sarcasm is unappreciated," Lilith smirked and then added, "Should I be worried that the two of you are getting along so well?"

"Not at all," Roland said at the same time the sniper replied, "Only a little."

"What's the plan?" Lilith questioned.

"Gotta talk to Tannis," Sera replied, once more adjusting the satchel at her shoulder.

"The others should be back by now," Roland thought aloud. With nothing else to say, the three crossed town to the Headquarters.

At the center of town, Mordecai waited for them. Seeing Sera, he rushed towards her. "Got a minute?" he asked.

Roland and Lilith hesitated when the hunter-class sniper stopped before them. Sera passed him, spinning on her toe and striding backward. "I'll pass," she said, "Last time I gave you a minute, we had a nice little talk where you turned into a grade-A asshole."

"And we can fight about it later, right now—"

"I have to talk to Tannis," she interrupted, turning and disappearing up the steps into the Headquarters.

Lilith heard Mordecai swear beside her. "What's wrong?" the Siren asked, all seriousness returning to her voice.

"Marcus showed up," he told her and bolted from where he stood, running after the woman whom had left him behind.

"Damn it," Roland sighed.

"This could be bad."

Stepping over the threshold, Mordecai's feet glued to the floor and he stopped abruptly. The scene before him was the one he had hoped they could all avoid. Marcus Kincaid, graying and round, stood in the center of the room. In his hand sat a Jakobs revolver, the muzzle pressed firmly at Sera's forehead, his finger on the trigger. At that range, Jakobs or not, it would only take one bullet.

Sera had always been a quicker draw than the man before her and even though Marcus held a gun to her head, she had been able to press her old, dark green Tediore against his temple. They were at a standstill, quiet, glaring. Tannis stood at a distance, clutching a dirtied pack to her chest. "One more," Sera said through grit teeth, "and we could have ourselves a real Truxican Standoff."

"You have what belongs to me, Girl," Marcus growled.

"Possession is nine-tenths of the la..." she shook her head, and muttered to herself, "no that's a different planet. What was it on Pandora? Oh, right! Finders keepers, losers _shut the hell up_!"

"I want it back!"

"Or what?" she grinned, a very unattractive look, rather fierce and wild-like. "You're never going to talk to me again?" She pretended to pout, it was mocking, laughing. Marcus was not a man to laugh at. She was playing a dangerous game with the man whom often told the new Vault Hunters that if they bought from anyone else, he would have them killed. It was a strange statement, however, since it was nearly impossible to buy another weapon from anyone on Pandora, they didn't exist. Perhaps, Marcus had killed them all.

"I will shoot you!" he shouted, his voice roaring.

"Shoot me?" she laughed, angry, abrupt. "You'll never find a damn thing!"

"Marcus!" came a shout from the doorway, neither dared to look but the sound was Roland's commanding voice. "Sera!" He crossed the distance to stand near them and set a hand at the top of each gun. "Put them away. Now!"

"Yes," Marcus said to the woman before him, "Listen to your leader. We're fighting Handsome Jack, remember?"

"No," Sera growled, grinding the muzzle of her Tediore into the arms-dealer's flesh. At her side, Roland waited for her denouncement of him as her leader, awaited her inevitable rejection of any superior officer. But, to his surprise, it did not come. Instead, she said, "No, you are fighting Jack. I never said I was."

The room fell quiet. Marcus couldn't control the surprise that came upon his face. Roland took that moment to step between them. He was sure Marcus wouldn't shoot him. He was only hoping Sera wouldn't. He had his back to the sniper, having shoved her gun to the side to take his place, facing the dangerous merchant. "Get back to your shop, Marcus," Roland told the man before him. "You can settle this later. After Jack is dead, and not in the middle of Operations." Over his shoulder he said, "Sera, I need to talk to you upstairs."

"He leaves first," she told him and he could almost feel her disappear at his back. He knew she was still there, out the corner of his eye he could still see her, but she was so quiet, so still. It was something he had witnessed Mordecai do out in the field, only when he was sober. It only meant she was still ready for a fight, still ready to shoot. Her Tediore was lowered, as was Marcus' Jakobs, but it didn't mean they had given up putting a bullet through the other's head.

Time felt slowed as Roland waited, as they all waited for Marcus to suspend his death threat for another day and leave the Headquarters of the Crimson Raiders. He walked out the door with gun ready, his eyes on Sera.

When he was gone, Roland slowly faced her, moving with caution to not draw her fire. She was still gone, waiting, expecting, her green eyes on the door. He exhaled heavily, a deep sigh loud enough that it drew her attention. She seemed to return from the distant place where she hid herself in plain sight, away from the stealth training to the Sera he had just returned to Sanctuary with. "Upstairs," he said softly.

"If you're going to reprimand me," she said waving the Tediore before putting it away, striding to the stairs in the corner of the room, "I'm just going to ignore you like I always do. Blah blah blah, you should listen, blah blah blah." She was mocking him as she disappeared onto the second floor.

Roland rubbed his face, taking a deep breath. Lilith said, "Don't freak out just yet. You know she says or does things sometimes just for the reaction. She's always done that, especially to Marcus and Scooter."

"And Crazy Earl," Tannis piped up randomly, drawing their attention and then she promptly strode away, not wanting to be the focus of so many faces.

"I'm just hoping," Roland sighed, "we didn't just bring one of Jack's spies into Sanctuary."

"Sera wouldn't!" Lilith nearly shouted, her mouth agape.

"And if she is?" He shook his head. "You just might be too close to this."

Upstairs, Roland found Sera standing on the balcony, staring out at Sanctuary and the clouds around it. She heard his military-steps as he approached, but only gave him a cursory glance over her shoulder. He came to a stop beside her, remained quiet, waited.

"I meant what I said," she told him calmly. "I never said I was here to fight Jack."

"You never said why you were here," he replied coldly.

"Cool your britches, Fearless Leader," she said, biting back the edges of a smile. "I know what you're thinking."

"Do you?"

"I know you Ro," she said, crossing her arms, "Just as well as you know me but you don't want to admit." She shook her head slowly, seemingly thinking. "Look, I'm not fighting Jack," she continued, softer this time, less humor, "I'm leaving here with your new Vault Hunters. I'll cover them. I shoot where they shoot. Lil asked me here because of Mordecai. I'm here for revenge. I will shoot Jack between the eyes for what he did to my best friend. But I'm not fighting Jack." He looked to her then, confusion dawning on his face and without looking, she could tell. "Dahl left. Atlas fell. Jakobs killed itself. Hyperion will fall." She took a slow breath and raised her gaze to Roland. "Jack is only part of the problem. Who's to say that after he's dead, someone worse won't come along to replace him."

"Who could be worse than Jack?"

"Me."

They watched each other a moment before a smirk appeared at Sera's lips and Roland began laughing.

"Could you imagine it?" she chuckled. "Me? Ruler of Pandora?"

"We'd all die."

She grinned and then sighed. "Man! If this were old times I'd ask you to pretend like I _was_ a spy. Make everybody paranoid."

Roland smiled. Old times. When jokes were jokes and it was just the bandits gone crazy. When torture wasn't an option and their lives really weren't on the line. "One day," he told her, "hopefully sooner now that we have more help."

"Where you shoot," she said solemnly, "I shoot."

Roland watched her quietly. He was glad Lilith was still his voice of reason. He shouldn't have doubted Sera, not now, not after everything that had happened.

On their way down the stairs, Sera paused, seeing everyone standing around, old Vault Hunters and new, and Tannis still clutching the satchel. She looked to Axton and asked, "You taking off soon?"

"Trying to," he replied.

"I'll meet all of you at the hub. Gotta pretend to agree with Tannis," she told him.

"Hey!" Tannis said sharply.

Lilith, strode up to Sera as the new Vault Hunters left the Headquarters. Brick, Roland, and Mordecai ascended the stairs. No questioning look passed between them. The berserker and the hunter had known that it was impossible for the woman from the Dust to ever be a traitor to those she had traveled to the Vault with. Not now, not after so much had transpired. And definitely, not after the battle at New Haven against Handsome Jack and Wilhelm when, had it not been for her arrival with a new wave of help, they certainly would have all died.

"Hey," the Siren spoke up when the others had gone. "Be careful, alright?"

Sera scoffed, "What're you talkin about? We'll be back before you can say: skag stole my wooden leg."

Lilith covered her mouth, barely stifling a laugh as she left the sniper and returned upstairs.

At the hub, the new Vault Hunters waited. As Sera stepped inside, Axton turned to choose their destination but stopped when her voice filled the room. "I've got a mission," she said.

"What's the reward?" Salvador questioned.

"We'll see when it's done."

"What're you asking us to do?" Axton asked, stepping away from the fast travel device.

"I'll be going with you," she assured him, "but I want to go to the Preservation. I want to see it. And I want to cause a little chaos."

"I'd appreciate another tour of your armory," Axton casually told her.

"Don't push it, Blondie," she replied, "or I'll blow it up just to spite you."

The rest of the team stared at Axton and gestured for him to stop at that, to say no more.

Turning her attention to Zero, Sera asked, "What do you think, Ninja?"

Zero stood quietly where he was, watching the woman across the room from him, still covered in blood and mud. A question mark displayed over his faceplate, a hologram, red. Finally, he said. "Time wasted on talk. Opportunity awaits. Let us cause chaos."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"What the hell?!" Sera shouted. "They turn invisible?"

Salvador laughed, long, maniacal.

"Haven't been out here before?" Axton chuckled, withdrawing his turret.

"Been a while," Sera grumbled, firing three shots from her red repeater into the face of a rampaging stalker. When it was dead, she reloaded as if she had all the time in the world, slow, casual. "I mean, last time I was here, there wasn't a giant fortress over there. And these guys used to just kinda sit in the sun and soak up the heat."

"And now we're shooting them in the face," Maya told her. "How times change."

As the path before them cleared and Sera began to proceed forward, Zero tapped her shoulder, directly on the metal plate. She turned abruptly as if he had struck her, the look on her face saying he was lucky she didn't hit him. He pointed up into the the nearby mountain where it hollowed out into a cavern. A question mark projected over his faceplate.

With a smirk, Sera replied, "Haiku taking time. Thinking time now for killing. Aggravating, huh?"

Zero stared at her. A beat of time passed and then he said, "Asshole."

"Missing some syllable's there, Ninja," she chuckled as they moved out toward the place where the new Vault Hunters had come across Mordecai, where he had told them his story of losing Bloodwing.

They waited as Sera investigated. It was her mission after all. She wanted to see things for herself. She ran her hand over the chalk markings on the wall, an accurate layout of the Hyperion facility. His camp was a mess, the fire pit empty as it had gone out when it had been abandoned, the remnants of a meal still there though it had been picked at by stalkers and any other wildlife.

Axton watched as she raised her brown rifle, looking down the scope, moving slowly as if surveying the trouble that lay ahead. Lowering her rifle, she said nothing before stepping off the edge, sliding down the rock to stumble on her feet. Maya rushed forward, Zero at her side. They looked down and found the sniper walking away, toward the facility, as if there were nothing that could stop her.

"We should get down there," Maya said suddenly, "I heard Mordecai and Lilith talking about how she doesn't carry an ECHOnet device."

"Shit," Axton swore. "If she gets killed, she isn't going to regenerate."

Zero leapt from the ledge.

"Shit," Salvador grumbled, "If she dies, and doesn't regenerate, we don't get paid."

"I'd be a little more worried about Mordecai," Maya shrugged.

Upon entering the facility, loaders and engineers deployed. Axton found the all too familiar silence of a firefight. The roar of gunfire, the motion of the reload, everything becoming a calming buzz in his ears. The new Vault Hunters held no fear of death, ripping through opponents. But he noticed that Sera, whose death would be as permanent as bandits losing their heads, fought as if she had a million lives. Maya stayed at her back, covering the sniper. It was a risk bringing Sera out there. Had he known she carried no personal device, he would have refused her wish to join them. Would his refusal have worked? He didn't think so. Sera would have come whether he liked it or not. He had to admit, however, having the sniper around was nice.

Clearing out the docks, they proceeded forward. Rushing toward a set of stairs, Sera paused at a crate. She slid the strap of her rifle over her shoulder and ran her hands over the metal box before her. "I hear you..." Axton heard her mutter to herself. He watched her grab a line on the ground, run back toward a generator. A group of specimen guards suddenly flooded out of a doorway, came down the stairs. The new Vault Hunters rounded on them while from behind, they heard, "Oops." Glancing back, Axton saw Sera leaning heavily on the generator, her hand on a lever. The doors at the front of the crates dropped open and the lizard-like stalkers rushed out from within, leaping on the guards, throwing tail-spikes into bodies and faces, vanishing and reappearing, leaving the new Vault Hunters completely alone.

The Vault Hunters stood still, watching, unsure as enemies fought enemies. "Onward, troops!" Sera called, her usual non-serious self.

Up two sets of stairs, they stepped onto the road, destruction behind them. Maya said, "Road or ground?"

"Are you asking me?" Sera questioned, brow raised. The Siren smirked. At the wall before her that separated the rest of the road from reach, Sera frowned. She said, "Hey Ninja, go stand over there."

Again, a question mark appeared over his faceplate as Zero strode toward the wall. And quickly the projection became a smiley face as Sera rushed toward him. He crouched down as she neared, held out his hands and she stepped into them. Standing, he moved with her momentum, throwing her into the air. She went up and over the wall, landing with a shuffled sound on the other side. "Ouch..."

"Bad idea?" Maya questioned.

"Are you kidding?" the sniper replied with laughter, "That was damn-cool!"

"We're taking the low-road," Axton said.

"Got your six," Sera told him.

Moving through the grass, stalkers and skags exposed to experimental testing rushing them in anger and distrust of humans. The silence of battle settled upon Axton once again as creatures came from every cove and crevice. The road lay at his back, and while he knew Sera was up there somewhere, occasionally her bullets flying too near for his own comfort to strike down a beast at his back, or nearing too close to one of the others, the hairs at the back of his neck stood on end. Something told him he was in danger, that there was something looming behind him. It made him paranoid, disrupted his silence, his focus.

At the doorway leading into another section of the compound, the new Vault Hunters found Sera waiting for them. As Axton passed by her, she said, "Hey, your turret is better at this than you are."

He paused in step, staring back at her. "You think you're funny, don't you?"

"Fucking hi-larious," she told him, slapping a hand on his shoulder and shaking her head as she walked to the front of the group, laughing.

Striding through the section of compound, noting the lack of security, Sera paused. She looked about. Axton watched her stride to a lever above a green light and flip it down. The all-too-familiar sound of skags entered the room, echoing. It was then that the guards flooded from wherever they had been hiding, or on their lunch break, shouting.

The skags roared, charging their guards as a pack, knocking them to the ground, ripping into them with large, gaping mouths. Blood splattered the floors. The new Vault Hunters assisted the beasts this time, making the battle shorter, losing less skags than they had stalkers.

When the hall was quiet, the skags running to freedom, Maya set a hand at her hip and said, "Alright, spill it."

"Hm?" Sera questioned.

"I can see how you figured out the last cage," the Siren told her, "it was pretty obvious." She then pointed to the lever that had released the skags. "But unless you just go about pressing buttons and such, there's no way you'd know that particular switch freed them."

"I just go about pressing buttons," Sera shrugged. "Much more fun that way.

A corridor later to a broken spherical room, Sera rushed up a ramp to look out at an expanse of grasslands and across the way the holding facility sat with loaders falling from the sky. "Still laughing?" Axton questioned as he walked by her.

"I'm starting to get pissed off," she grumbled, hands tightening on her rifle.

"It's going to get a whole lot worse," he told her.

Loader after loader. Stalker after stalker. The new Vault Hunters fought their way through the plain. Sera lagged behind. Turret out, covering and distracting a super badass loader as Zero used his personal deception to sneak behind it and put a blade through its gadgetry, Axton looked back. Sera stood in the distance, hadn't moved too far from the domed room, stared out over everything as if she were a mere spectator at some enjoyable event. She didn't smile though, her gaze narrowed, whether from the sun overhead or a thought in her mind, he didn't know.

The loader, the focus of his turret, exploded. Bits of metal and debris falling from the sky. As the rest of the team searched for loot, fallen weapons, bits of eridium to trade with Crazy Earl, money, Axton waited for Sera to join them. He waited for her to be in speaking distance and asked, "Problem?"

She said nothing. He had given her a signal that the story was about to unfold. That somewhere in the building ahead, Bloodwing had been killed. She paused in step, taking a slow breath. Axton watched the tension settle into her shoulders as she looked at the doorway they were to pass through. Painted across the top was the word "specimen" in bold letters.

"There's something you're not telling us," Axton said, just barely loud enough for her to hear.

"If I haven't even told Roland, what makes you think I'm about to tell you?" she replied. Clearing her throat, she glanced to him and added, "You know, I swear I heard someone saying their favorite part about you new Vault Hunters was that you didn't ask questions. Why am I getting the third degree?"

"I don't trust you," Axton told her.

"And you shouldn't."

Moving through the hall, Sera found herself somewhere in the middle of the group. To the end of the corridor lined with cages, Axton brought them to a stop at the door. "This was the holding cage," Maya told the sniper.

Sera's fists clenched, her knuckles white as she entered the pen. A tall domed room, trees and rocks, places to nest and perch. She exhaled a shaking breath as she stepped forward, her eyes on a stain of blood and feathers in the dirt. Lowering to her knee, she reached out, taking a bloody gray feather in her fingers, raising it to eye level.

"We found it like this," Maya said, "They had already taken her by the time we arrived." She watched the sniper dig her fingers into the dirt, into the stain of blood and feathers and then she let everything go, set her forehead to the back of her hand, bowed her head. Shoulders trembling, she kept her back to the new Vault Hunters. They didn't push her to continue, it was her mission.

When she pushed herself to her feet, she held three long tail feathers in her hand. Reaching back, she secured them in the tie that held her ponytail of dreadlocks. She turned, returning to the group and they continued on through the preserve.

A broken walkway led them down into the grass and back up metal stairs into a skag enclosure. There were too many dens to count, some burying into and under walls of the compound. An open door beneath a ruined, unfinished road, led inside. Sera paused to look over the road above their heads. Shaking her head, she walked inside. A secretary-bot inside warned them to stay within the red lines.

A warehouse opened up before them. Maya watched as the sniper walked away from them, a straight line toward a small room. She followed, watching Sera come to a switch and flip it without a smile, without a change in expression. A cage hanging from the ceiling opened and a massive stalker leapt out. The handlers charged with keeping the creature under wraps rushed out at the voice over the intercom saying that creatures had been released.

The great stalker flickered invisible and handlers burst into pieces as it attacked with claws that turned human bodies into ribbons. The Vault Hunters had little to do as the creature attacked in such a rage that it was better to stand back. Sera left the small room with the switch, stepping out into the main room. The stalker charged her, sliding to a stop, face lowered even with hers. It screeched in her face, made its display.

Salvador raised his guns, Zero raised a hand to halt him. The stalker snorted, turned invisible, departed. Zero spoke then, "How unfortunate. We must now ask a question. The beast did know you."

"Ninja, please. Couldn't form a question in seventeen syllables?" Sera grumbled. She checked the ammunition in her rifle and the extra rounds in her pockets and then continued onto the second floor. They were quick to follow. Coming into another section of warehouse, a group of combat engineers spotted them and rushed in for the attack.

Sera showed panic. She turned as if to run and it caught their attention. Then she turned back and said, "Catch!" She tossed out a grenade and the combat engineer out front caught it. Diving away, the whole group burst into pieces. Maya walked over to her when the blood settled and offered a hand. "Never were too smart," Sera told her.

"Neat trick," Maya chuckled.

"Doesn't work all the time," the sniper replied, "It's usually kinda hit or miss." She grinned. "Get it? Hit or miss?"

The Vault Hunters groaned.

At the end of the path ahead of them stood an elevator. "I don't know," Maya began to say, "if they've cleaned up since we were last here." The thought of a decapitated Bloodwing was not something any of them wanted to see.

On the elevator, it descended into the Observation Wing. Clear, cleaned. They seemed to relax, breathe a sigh of relief. Axton had told Sera the story upon their first meeting. Now that they were there, at the place of the battle, there was nothing, no sign of a fight. No sign of death. It had been whitewashed and swept over and nothing of the brutality remained.

Stepping off of the elevator, Maya said, "I... really thought we were going to save her. My only comfort is that Mordecai tranquilized her before Handsome Jack blew her collar, so she didn't feel anything..."

Sera paled, staring at the center of the Observation Wing. She swallowed hard, sweat glistening at her brow. Striding to the center, she took a deep breath, her heart pounding in her ears. From behind, Axton could see her shoulders sag, watched her hands flex from the tightness she held them in and then she clenched them tight once again. "I..." she began saying softly, her voice catching in her throat as she looked down at the clean floor beneath her. "I helped build this place." She shook her head. "The whole goddamn complex. When Hyperion first came to Pandora they were looking to understand the local flora and fauna and I sketched out this whole fucking facility with Tannis' help." She faced them. Her voice was raising now, eyes wide with an instant fear and a flash of guilt that the Vault Hunters recognized instantly. "That pen? That holding pen that they had Bloodwing in? That was a specific habitat for her species. Tannis and I were studying them, have been, and still are. This was not supposed to be a place for testing but for observational research!"

"I thought you said you hadn't been here since before it was built," Axton said.

"I haven't!" she shouted. "Don't you think if I had any idea this was going on, I would have burned it to the ground the moment I found out?"

"Would you?" Axton questioned. "You and Tannis apparently love your research. And she didn't seem too concerned with the operations of the Preserve when we were collecting slag samples for her."

Sera's opened her mouth to speak, quickly shut. A screech in the air brought their attention up, up to the circling mothrakk that cast a monstrous shadow over the Vault Hunters.

Sanctuary was quiet. In the Headquarters of the Crimson Raiders Mordecai sat in a corner of the room, tossing back another bottle. Lilith stood with Roland and Brick. Brick reassembled an assault rifle. Lilith watched the sniper drink himself numb. Roland stood, thinking, going over his strategies in his head.

Footsteps on the stairs brought their eyes up to the new Vault Hunters as they entered the room. "Took you guys long enough," Mordecai slurred.

"Made a detour," Axton said.

Lilith looked among them. "Sera?" she asked.

"Didn't want to come in," the other Siren shrugged.

Roland glanced to Lilith and she told him, "I'll go check on her."

About town the red-haired Siren spoke with the citizens of Sanctuary. "Saw her head off towards Scooter's place when she came back," a woman told her. Unsure of the information, and why the sniper would be there in the first place, Lilith investigated anyway.

Down the stairs she went, intending to head in through the garage and out at the edge of the city was where she saw her. Standing, staring out over Pandora, the clouds having dissipated to a warm, clear day.

Brow furrowed, she looked into the garage and saw Scooter working beneath a car. He pulled himself out to grab a drink and stopped upon seeing Lilith. Getting to his feet, he went to the tattooed woman and looked out to see Sera. "She seems like she's in one of her moods," Scooter whispered. "First arrived about an hour ago and, damn, I thought she was gonna jump."

"She say anything?" Lilith asked.

"Nope. Not a word." He shook his head. "Madder than a mosquito in a mannequin factory..."

Lilith clenched her teeth in frustration. One sniper was drunk to the world, having remembered the reason he had retreated from the field. And the other stood like leaping to her death from a floating city was her only option.

Cautiously, she approached. She said nothing, only stood with Sera at her right, stared down into the grassy land far beneath them. She stayed until the sun went down and the sniper finally turned. "I'm going to bed," she said and walked away.

When she was gone, Scooter ran to the Siren. "Haven't seen her like this since that whole situation with Mordecai."

"You saw her after that?" Lilith questioned quickly.

"Yeah," Scooter nodded. "Not much. Ellie saw her more than I did, since she was out in the Dust and all. But then again, after that happened, she saw me and Ellie like she saw them bandits. Just angry when she looked at us like we were the ones that done screwed her over."

In the Headquarters, Mordecai stood on the balcony, leaning heavily against the wall with a bottle in his hand. The world swam around him, his vision blurry. The Vault Hunters had left. Brick had gone to bed. Roland again had wandered off, perhaps in search of Lilith. And as he stood by himself, looking out over Sanctuary, she appeared. She walked with her hands shoved into her pockets, her head lowered and her shoulders drawn.

She stopped, perhaps feeling his heavy gaze and she looked up. Her brows were drawn, guilt strewn across her face. It was not an expression so often seen on Sera that that alone nearly pulled him out of his ruin. He lowered the bottle.

Sera sighed, her head lowering, her shoulders slumping, and she turned, walking away from the Headquarters. He called after her. Striding to the low balcony wall, he tripped, falling across it, his bottle falling loose from his hand, rolling down the red, cloth awning, busting on the ground.

Hearing footsteps, he glanced behind him to a voice saying, "Gonna break your neck." Roland stood nearby offering a hand.

Mordecai reached up. "Where'd she go?"

"Who?" Roland asked as he pulled his friend to his feet.

"Sera. She was just here," he replied, staggering to the side.

Roland reached out to steady him. "Easy," he said and glanced about. He frowned. "I didn't see her. Are you seeing things again?"

"Don't patronize me, Roland," Mordecai grumbled.

"Get some sleep," Roland told him. "Lilith found her earlier. I'm sure she's fine."

"I'm not worried about her," he slurred. "I'm not."

Assisting the sniper to his bed, the leader of the Crimson Raiders sighed. He could see his team falling apart. Brick was still himself, little tact and full of every want to kill and break people. Lilith was becoming so distracted with Sera's return. And Mordecai wasn't coming back. Physically he was there, mentally, however his grief left him stranded. His want of revenge let him take to the bottle with no recourse.

Sera's sudden distance, however, was a cause of concern. He had found Lilith before returning to the Headquarters. She had told him of Sera's disposition. It was eerily similar to the person she had displayed during the last few days they had been together after the Underdome, before Sera vanished to the Dust, never seen until the battle for New Haven, where, after, she only remained until Roland had choice words with Brick and then the berserker and the other sniper left Sanctuary.

New Haven. As he left Mordecai to his bed, the sniper turning his back on him from the top bunk, Roland returned to the central room, staring down at the glowing screen that projected a map of Pandora. New Haven ran through his mind. The battle with Wilhelm. The ground split before him, the world exploding around him. He reached out for Lilith. They were going to die, obliterated, ECHOnet transmitters destroyed. The world around him slowed. There was no sound as Wilhelm fired upon them. He could only smell the dirt clogging his nostrils, dust.

And then Wilhelm turned. He didn't remember hearing it. The helicopter, the bright yellow Buzzard flying low firing missiles and corrosive rounds at Wilhelm's chest. Roland and the other Vault Hunters clambered back, retreated while the Buzzard gave them time. And then Wilhelm's laser cut through the right engine like a hot knife through butter. As it careened, falling to the ground in a heap of flames, a body jumped out of the metal death trap before it struck the sand and exploded taking out a cluster of buildings. Luckily, most of the citizens had already fled.

Rolling in the dirt, Sera jumped to her feet, mere yards away from Wilhelm. The metal monstrosity fired the terrible laser, cutting up the ground. Sera chucked an entire grenade belt directly into the path of the beam. New Haven went up in flames but they survived. Mordecai ran back into the wreckage, into the wall of fire to retrieve the other sniper. He held her on his back, pulled her away from certain death, and she never knew as she lay unconscious across his back, not to wake for several days.

"The concussion alone should have killed her," Roland sighed when they settled into a deserted bandit camp for the night to rest, recuperate, and tend to their wounds. Those last moments in New Haven had been the only time he had truly feared for his life. Regeneration wouldn't happen. Death would be final. He wasn't ready for that. He owed Sera his life. They all did. And just the same, her life was owed to them. They kept her alive, knowing she only had, only wanted, one life. In the end, he wondered if that were the reason Sera had come to their rescue. They had no way of getting a hold of her through the ECHOnet to tell her about Handsome Jack's attack on New Haven, but Roland had left messages with people all over in case they had seen her. The message had gotten to her. She had arrived in time. And he wondered if the reason she had come was only because she owed them her life. They were bound together through violence and adventure, camaraderie, friendship, and to some extent, even love.

"Yeah," Mordecai finally answered after setting a cool cloth across the unconscious sniper's forehead. "Well, we all know Sera. No ECHOnet, but she just won't die."

"You make it sound like a bad thing," Lilith muttered.

Mordecai shook his head. "No. Not a bad thing."

Heaving a sigh, Roland shook his head. The blue lights in the Headquarters were blinding. He rubbed his tired eyes. At the rate things were going, he would be surprised if they all made it through putting a stop to Handsome Jack's plan. He could only hope that, when it came down to it, they could all pull together long enough to bury Hyperion in Pandoran sands.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Outside with Lilith, Roland sighed. It was dark, the middle of the night. He couldn't sleep and she wouldn't leave him to himself. Inside, Tannis was still awake, twaddling to herself in her own psychotic words. The New Vault Hunters slept downstairs in the headquarters, taking a moment to rest. Defeating Jack was high priority, but a tired body couldn't hold recoil. Sera hadn't yet surfaced again since Lilith had seen her, and Roland was beginning to wonder if she had retreated to the Dust once again.

Then, suddenly, a shadow moved behind him. He caught sight at the corner of his eye and glanced back. Sera was there, striding forward, her gaze focused, her fists clenched. Roland moved forward to intercept her but Lilith set a hand at his chest and held him back. Lilith rushed after her as Sera moved into the Headquarters, barely making it inside in time to see the other sniper's fist connect with Tannis' face and the less-than-sociable doctor hit the floor.

With a audible sigh of relief, Sera said, "I feel better."

The New Vault Hunters were sitting up in bed, staring, watching the sniper flex her hand and shake the impact. When Sera turned, Lilith stared at her with a questioning look. The sniper said nothing, only smiled a peaceable smile and turned to leave. Tannis lay unconscious on the floor.

From a top bunk, Axton chuckled. "Been waiting for something like that since we got back," he said.

"That's what we stayed the night for?" Salvador grumbled.

"Shut up and go to sleep," Maya growled and threw her pillow over her head.

From the stairs, Mordecai, still under the influence, called down, "What's all the commotion about?"

"Am I running a halfway house?" Roland questioned himself.

Striding down the stairs, Mordecai looked over to see Tannis on the floor and questioned, "Sera was here?"

"Funny how he knows," Lilith muttered.

"Where'd she go?" Mordecai asked, nearly tripping over his own feet as he came to the bottom step.

"Check the Preserve," Salvador growled and Maya struck him in the head with her pillow from across the room. Zero's faceplate shown with a smiley face.

The Preserve was where he went, after Roland and Lilith asked him to stay until he sobered up, he refused and stepped through the Fast Travel device. He knew the path, walked through the grass into his cutaway in the mountain. It was the only place he thought he could go, thought she would be. If she weren't, he could at least try to see her from where he was.

Yet, as he made those final steps across the rock bridge and into his cutout in the mountain, he could see the glow of a fire and smell the all-too-familiar scent of roasting stalker. He tried to remain quiet as he approached, watching ahead for her figure in the dark. When he saw her sitting at the cliff's edge, staring out at the light of the loading dock, he froze. She knew he was there, he was sure, yet she still ignored him.

A cold wind slid through the cavern, making the flame at the back of the cave dance beneath the stalker that cooked above it. Against better judgment, he decided to speak. "Can't sleep?" he asked. She could never sleep when it was cold, it was why she had curled up against him so many nights, under thick blankets that always made him sweat.

"Not here for sleeping," she replied without taking her eyes off the dock.

"And what're you here for?"

"If I put one good line of explosives down in the boiler room, one in the shipping yard, and one in the warehouse, this place would be junked. It'd have to be started from scratch and if we can put an end to Jack before then, it'll never happen."

"Sera," he said softly, "What're you here for?"

She quieted and then smirked. "Sure took a while to get to this conversation. Are you sober enough for it?" When he said nothing, she continued. "Lil asked me to Sanctuary because of you. But I'm here because of Bloodwing. I'm not here for you."

"I know," he said. The sudden seriousness of her words brought him to reality, quickly out of the end of his stupor. "You're never going to forgive me, are you?" he questioned.

"Forgive you?" she said, her voice raising as she remained unmoved. Her hands gripped the rock she sat upon. She took a long breath and fell silent.

He was much too familiar with the woman that sat before him. She was the sniper, ready to kill, ready to tear into him if need be, but she kept her gaze away, on a different target and he wondered if she were avoiding holding him at blame.

He didn't want to say anything, she wouldn't forgive him for anything he had done. He wasn't sure he should even try. Trying would only create aggression and pull her anger toward him... The thought fell away suddenly as an object sailed towards him in an arc from where she sat and he caught it. "Don't lose that," she told him.

Running calloused fingers over the smooth silver in his hands, he looked at the flask, recognized it the moment it had landed in his grasp. It was his, a gift he had given to her some time in the past, back when she drank nearly as much as he did, after the Vault, before they had gone their separate ways, right in the middle of their greatest time together. She no longer seemed to be the wreck that he was.

Sera kept her gaze from him, feigning her disinterest as he unscrewed the top of the silver flask and pressed lips to it, knocking the entire contents back. It was hard, he coughed as the liquid burned down his throat, burned down into his stomach.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "At least... you tranquilized her, and she didn't feel anything."

His fingers gripped into the flask, hands shaking, then he replied, his voice harsh, "Does anything feel pain when you blow its head off?" Though he hadn't meant his words as a direct strike, it was how she took them. The sniper from the Dust had a reputation for long shots that ended in decapitation. He tried to retract his statement but she had given him nothing other than a terrible void look before dropping her gaze back to the docks. Her lack of reaction was worrisome.

"I'm here to help," she said, "Past behind us. I'm here for Bloodwing. And if you don't get a chance to put a bullet through Jack's face. I won't die until his brains are scattered across the sand."

"I miss your poetry," he told her, an attempt at lightening the mood.

She chuckled, smiled. "Shut up and drink yourself into oblivion," she told him.

"That was the last," he said, looking down at the flask in his hands.

Her head turned and she stared at him incredulously. "You drank all of it? Even those barrels?" she questioned loudly.

With a shake of his head, he replied, "You wanted me to stop. I'm done."

Rising to her feet, she scoffed, "Since when do you _ever_ do anything _I _want you to do?"

Grinning, he said, "There was that one time."

Sera stilled, he could almost see the heat rising into her face in the dark. It took her a moment to compose herself, to shake off old feelings of comfort. "Once and never again," she said crisply, "last I remember you made your choice."

Mordecai winced. He'd been waiting for her to bring it up since she had arrived in Sanctuary. He had made his choice that day in the Underdome, the choice that had severed his ties that held Sera to him.

Moxxi had invited them to her Underdome. It hadn't taken them long to defeat the smaller arenas one through three. She upped the stakes for the larger three. Mordecai helped Sera to climb to the highest point of the arena to provide cover fire. She never left her place as Brick, Lilith, and Roland would rush by and toss ammunition up to her. The fifth arena was like the three smaller. They joked continuously, Mordecai and Sera calling riddles back and forth, keeping the mood light. "If you're on me, you're hung!" Sera shouted. Brick could be heard laughing in the distance. When Mordecai would give no reply, she would give another clue, "I can make you stiff!"

"Hell yeah you can!" Mordecai shouted back, "Fucking gallows!"

"Correct!"

Mordecai's turn, he shouted to her, "I can do it again and again and again."

"Echo!" she shouted.

"Goddamnit!" he replied. The rest of the team could be heard laughing.

The lighthearted words were a sign of their ease, but as the battle continued, their words became less and less. By the end of the first large arena, they sat waiting, downing water and sweating profusely. Moxxi helped less by egging them on. They ended up not taking too long of a break to keep from cooling down and threw themselves into the second arena. Only Moxxi's words could be heard echoing around them. "Watch out for Mordecai, he knows what he's doing." Or, "Oh, Brick's scary down there." Or one of her many quips to the crowd watching the bloodbath below.

At the end of the second arena, Sera wiped her brow, the sweat and blood, from her face and turned to the others. They were beat. Moxxi watched them from a distance, waited to see if they would continue. "Come on now," she told them. "You're almost there." She placed a caressing hand upon Mordecai's shoulder and drew Sera's sharp gaze. She said nothing, only watched.

The next thing he knew, they were back in the Underdome, and the feeling had changed. Sera's shots were less focused, two bullets to one individual rather than it had been before. He had assumed it had been since they were so tired, running on empty. Moxxi wasn't about to let them come back later. They had to finish it. And they did.

As they strode out of the last arena, Sera bright with smiles, sweating and covered in dirt, he followed, feeling her excitement. And then there was Moxxi, awarding them with weapons. Lilith, Roland, and Brick had stepped away after their rewards, ready to get out of the Underdome. Moxxi gave Sera a rifle, a rose-red sniper rifle with a clean scope. The sniper from the Dust was excited, ready to use it. It was not a weapon often seen about Pandora. It was strong, a fast fire rate, and a burst shot when zoomed in. And then Moxxi turned to Mordecai and said, "Come with me and I'll give you your reward, Sugar."

He followed without a second thought. He left Sera behind and took to Moxxi's bed as if it were only natural. And there he stayed, never thinking twice about the sniper from the Dust until Moxxi left him for Handsome Jack.

Sera had taken it so lightly, he had assumed it hadn't bothered her at all. Only once, a time he could hardly remember he was so drunk, did Sera come to see him as he stayed with Moxxi. She went to ask for an explanation, why he had left her for Moxxi, why he had left her for a woman whom had once been like family. He was too far gone, too intoxicated. He was hardly dressed, laying in bed with the creator of the Underdome, waving a gun around and before he could give an answer, he pulled the trigger. He had shot her and she had staggered back and left without further altercation. It had been an accident, the reason she stopped drinking, the reason she stood by the fact that he was no better shot while drunk.

"It was an accident," he said suddenly, softly.

Sera's gaze slid to him, her face illuminated in the warm glow of the fire. "Lying sack of shit," was all she said. She turned toward the fire and pulled the roasted stalker from the flames. She then cut a small piece of meat, ate it, and said, "Look, I got the explosives to blow the Preserve to pieces. Want to give me a hand?"

"Where'd you get that kind of blast?" he asked, looking to where a satchel sat far from the fire.

"Had to do my second tea party for the month with our one and only Tiny Tina," she said with amusement, and then looked out to the building ahead of her and said, "Boom bitches..."

Dr. Zed stood in his unlicensed surgery ward, poking and prodding at a dead body when his door opened. He turned, not expecting anyone in particular and could only stare when he saw Sera and Mordecai walking in together, both covered in dirt and dust. "Well what can I do for you? Can't say I'm trained in pregnancy tests," he told them.

"If I could move my arm, I would shoot you," Sera grumbled.

It was only then he noticed that her left arm hung limp at her side. "I was worried about that..." he muttered and then asked, "What'd you do? Or do I want to know?"

"Fix my damn arm and stop with the jabs," she grumbled.

Dr. Zed chuckled. "Lay on down and I'll do what I can."

Mordecai watched from a short distance as Sera unfastened her top, tossing it to the side and she lay down upon an empty bed with only her black bra covering her small breasts. Zed unfastened it and pulled the straps to the side as he gave Sera an injection just beneath the metal plate at her left shoulder. There was no bedside manner, only rough, quick hands as he took a drill to the plate, pulling out screws and then he lifted the metal, ripping at the flesh that had grown into it, and set it on her lower back as if she, herself, were a table. "Huh..." he said, mused silently to himself at the mechanism he had created to act as her scapula that had been shattered in what Sera had called a Ninja attack Then he stuck his fingers into the raw muscle. "That bone seems right... That bone seems right... What's that?"

"Great, just what I want to hear..." Sera grumbled.

"Got it," he muttered and then withdrew his hand and chuckled at what he held in his fingers. "Try moving it now," he told her.

Sera flexed her hand, rotated her wrist, lifted her arm. Mordecai watched the muscles move, the metal in her back moving with her will. "Seems good," she told the doctor and he began to replace the protective plate. "Hey!" Sera shouted. "You clean that shit first. Gonna give me an infection."

Zed sighed and went about scrubbing down his hands and the metal plate and then replaced it into her ruined skin. Finishing with the screws, he said, "Done. Might not want to stand up for a bit til that shot wears off."

"As usual," she replied casually, as if he weren't just digging around in her body. Then she asked, "So what got stuck?"

"You had a wandering bullet that got jammed in the joint," he told her and held out a small object for her to see. "Looks like it struck the inside of the plate and just kinda got worked about with all that extra space in there."

"That is so disturbing," she told him, looking at the slug in his ungloved hand. "You didn't wear gloves?" she shouted. Zed shrugged. "No wonder you don't have a license anymore. Son of a bitch..."

Mordecai smirked.

"What're you doing walking around with a bullet in your shoulder, Girl?" Zed questioned, setting the slug aside.

"Ask the other son of a bitch," Sera grumbled, her words suddenly slurring as she slung an accusing finger toward Mordecai.

Noticing the change in behavior, the sniper asked, "What's wrong with her?"

"Don't worry about it, she'll fall asleep here in a little..." He looked to Sera and found her asleep, head to the side and the slightest bit of drool slipping from her mouth. "Last time I didn't do it and she just ran off right after like she wasn't missing a whole bone in her body. Crazy girl."

"Very attractive," Mordecai muttered. "Wish I had a camera."

"What were you two out doing?" Zed asked out of curiosity. "Look like you were causing hell like usual."

"Blowing things up," Mordecai replied, "Been a while since I've had fun like that."

"Well, you might want to let Roland know where you two have been," the unlicensed doctor told him, "he's been waiting for you to get back all night." When he saw Sniper A hesitate, watching Sniper B sleeping off the impromptu surgery, he added, "I'll keep an eye on her."

Returning to the headquarters, Mordecai passed Tannis, laying upon a bed, and paused to check her pulse. Feeling she was still alive, he moved upstairs without a second thought. "Where's Sera?" was Roland's first question at his arrival.

"Sleeping off a battle wound," he replied.

Brow raised, Lilith questioned suggestively, "And where were you two?"

"Blowing up the Preserve," he said simply, as if it were the only answer that was possible.

"The Preserve?" Brick asked, "You blew up the Preserve without me?"

"Sera's idea," Mordecai shrugged. "Already had the explosives and everything."

Lilith smiled. "About time she stopped being so quiet," she said.

Brick laughed, "All it took was a fist to Dr. Crazy's face."

With a sigh, Roland asked, "How long will Sera be out?"

"Few hours?" the sniper shrugged, "Zed had to sedate her for the surgery. She's drooling all over the place."

"Should've taken a picture," Brick guffawed.

"Surgery?" Lilith asked.

"That metal plate on her shoulder is protecting a missing bone," Mordecai explained, "We got knocked around a bit during the explosion and it locked up on her." He left out a bit of information. It wasn't like they needed to know the specifics. Sera still hadn't told them everything, and he wouldn't either. Glancing about, he asked, "So, where are the Vault Hunters? I didn't see them downstairs."

"Breaking open a bank for me in Lynchwood," Brick replied.

"Gonna piss off... that sheriff again," they heard, dragging words, and turned to see Sera leaning heavily against the wall, fully dressed and suited to go out into the field again, her head lulling to the side. As sluggish as she was and they still hadn't heard her come up the stairs. "I didn't..." she gulped, her mouth dry, "kill Tannis... did I?"

"Still alive," Mordecai informed her and then glanced her over. Her legs were spread, her feet turned in. She was struggling to keep herself standing. How she had gotten so far in that state, he couldn't imagine. Still full of surprises. "You're supposed to be out for a few hours," he told her, "resting."

"Not when... there's work... to be done," she replied and then grinned and looked to Lilith, "Thought I was... going to say... ain't no rest... for the wicked... huh?"

Smiling, the Siren said, "I can't say I wasn't expecting it."

"You should probably sit down," Roland said, "You look like hell."

"Sit down and... I'll probably... fall asleep again," she grumbled. "A grilled... skag sandwich and... half a pint of... rakk ale and I'll... be fine."

"Grilled?" Brick questioned quickly, "What, are you watching your weight?"

"Fine," Sera spat, "deep fry... the son of a bitch... and find me some... potatoes!"

"That's my girl!" the berserker roared. "Sounds delicious."

Glancing between them, Mordecai felt a strange feeling rising in his stomach again. Something he hadn't felt since his time with Sera in the tower. Jealousy. He never knew what had happened with Sera and the Slab King after he left with Moxxi. Sera wasn't one to tell much of anything to anyone. Only the two of them and Moxxi really knew how their relationship ended. He didn't know how she got the plate on her shoulder. And fewer knew who her father was. If there had ever been anything between Sera and Brick, there was a chance no one would ever know but the two of them. She was one of the few people in all the known worlds that could ever truly keep a secret.

Inching closer into the room, the sniper from the Dust asked with tired breaks in her words, "So... What now... Fearless Leader?"

"Angel informed us of how to infiltrate the bunker and get back the Vault Key. We have to go to Opportunity," Roland told her.

"Oh this'll be... damn fun," she grinned.

"Been to Opportunity before?" Lilith asked.

"I've seen... pictures," she replied. It was that moment that the new Vault Hunters came up the stairs, and Sera said, "To Opportunity!"

"No you don't," Mordecai said, "You can hardly stand you're so doped up."

"I'll snap back... once I start... moving," she told him.

"You should probably stay behind," Roland suggested.

Axton spoke then, "We could use Sera out there. It's a comfort with someone watching my ass." Sera glanced to him, a narrowed look, and he corrected himself, "Watching my back, I mean."

"Not that..." Sera breathed heavily, gulping down air, "the previous statement... was a lie." She smirked.

"I knew it," the commando joked.

"Getting along famously," Maya told the old Vault Hunters.

"Sera," Lilith said, her concern evident, "if you die out there..."

"I'm not... about to die... just yet," she muttered.

"Normally," Brick said, "I would say go wreck shit. But I could sneeze and you'd fall over."

The sniper from the Dust rolled her eyes. Then her attention slid up to Axton's face as he said, "We'll rest, for a little while. Til Sera's on her feet, and then we'll wreck Opportunity and then go finish off Lynchwood."

The old Vault Hunters watched him with skepticism, none too sure why he wanted Sera with them. Sera, however, said, "It's settled... We leave when... I can... withstand a... sneeze."

"Everyone get some rest," Roland said, and watched the new Vault Hunters receded downstairs. Sera turned and in the dark room, he could see blood running down her back from the metal plate at her shoulder. She made it as far as the couch and sat down, sweat glistening on her brow. Quietly, to Lilith, he said, "Get Zed up here to clean her up and put her under. She's not going anywhere for a while. Skags'll smell her a mile away in this condition."

Lilith departed and Mordecai said, "I should go with them. To Opportunity."

"I need you here," Roland replied.

Fists clenched, Mordecai muttered, "I'm starting to think you're using the Vault Hunters as cannon fodder. So that we can stay safe up here in Sanctuary while they do all of the dirty work. And you're getting Sera wrapped in all that."

Brick watched in silence from where he stood.

"That was never my intention," Roland replied, "and Sera's involvement is solely of her own wishes."

"Not your intention, but it's how it's going to happen, right?" Mordecai spat.

"The general," he heard from behind him, Sera's tired voice from where she sat upon the couch. "stays in headquarters... He knows... what we're supposed to do... And last I heard... the last time our... dear Fearless Leader... was out in the field... he got himself captured... and ransomed off to... Hyperion."

"You heard about that...?" Roland asked.

"You were captured?" Brick laughed.

"By... bandits," Sera chuckled.

Brick laughed harder. "Bandits?"

"Bloodshots," Sera informed him.

The Berserker had to leave the room. Mordecai stared back at the leader of the Crimson Raiders and bit back a smile. Roland held a hand to his head, clearly embarrassed.

"It gets... better," Sera smirked, "Tell them how."

"Let it go, Sera," Roland sighed. Then, with a shake of his head, he asked, "How do you know about that?"

"I have ears," she replied. "And I... use them... to listen."

Zed arrived and, with a shot of a needle, set Sera into a calm slumber. She didn't even fight him. She lay heavily upon the couch and, as she slept, he cleaned the wound. "She should be out for a few hours this time," he told the old Vault Hunters. "I gave her a stronger dose."

Mordecai watched her sleep a moment, listening to the quiet in the room. He turned to his bed and paused when he heard Brick ask, "So? How'd it happen?" Lilith looked to him curiously and Brick clarified, "How he got captured by the Bloodshots."

The Siren chuckled, saying, "You don't know? He didn't tell you?" Roland groaned. "He stopped to take a leak and got ambushed."

"That..." Mordecai sighed, "is so sad..."


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

"You should really slow down," Maya said, watching the other sniper pull herself atop a low-hanging roof. They hadn't been in Opportunity long enough to cause trouble, and it had found them first. Of course, once they let Handsome Jack know of their arrival by cutting down his statues, he was quick to react.

"To the top of... the building!" Sera grumbled, pulling herself to kneel. Maya watched her turn, take aim at the machines and engineers that tried to stop the statue demolition and provide some much needed cover for Salvador while he blew through everything in front of him with double sub-machine guns.

The poor Siren had been unfortunate enough to be the one to fetch Sera that morning. She had walked right into a conversation she had no business hearing. Sniper A stood feet away from where Sniper B sat upon the couch. Sera still looked sickly, pale, when she should have been so nicely tanned by the ninety-hour days on Pandora. "You're going to Opportunity?" Mordecai asked, his voice much too serious.

Taking a deep breath, Sera slowly flexed the fingers of her left hand, each digit shaking as she forced them to touch, to curl. "Yeah," she exhaled.

"It's no good," he told her, observing her stiff movements.

She grinned, "Are you kidding? Last time I was like this was the middle of the Claptrap Revolution," she replied, her voice much clearer than the broken sentences of the night before. "Viva la Robolución!" She thrust her right fist into the air.

Mordecai smirked, a fleeting expression before he asked, "I was worried about you."

"Me?" she scoffed, "What for?"

"Güttenberg," he said.

With a sigh, Sera settled back against the couch. "Yeah..." she muttered, "Wasn't the first time my best friend turned on me." Mordecai flinched and she turned her gaze away, glaring at the wall. Then, pushing past it, she raised her green Tediore and checked it over, loading a bullet into the chamber. "Turned that claptrap into scrap metal..." she muttered and then smirked. "Made a really nice radio out of it. Only gets Jack's stupid station half the time... the other half it's just static and then it starts making this _wub-wub-wub_ noise. Still a piece of junk."

"Sera..." he said softly and moved forward to sit beside her. Quickly, she was on her feet, taking few steps away to distance herself as he lowered to sit where she had been.

Setting the Tediore at her hip, adjusting the repeater at her left, she reached out and took up her two rifles and slung them over her shoulder. "Don't start caring now," she told him coldly. "You've got no right and you're just going to piss me off."

"You're going to get yourself killed," he told her without an inflection of tact.

"I keep hearing that," she laughed, a terribly unhappy sound. "Sera, you're going to die. Sera, you're not going to regenerate. Shit, Mordecai, what makes this any different than the last time we went after the Vault."

"Jack is fucking crazy," he told her, rising to stand before her. "He tortured Tannis, blew off Bloodwing's head! What makes you think he won't do the same to you?"

She turned to leave, growled, "Tranquilize me first," and he grasped her arm, her left arm, and pulled her back. She stumbled, fell against him.

Sera looked up, stared into his face with pain so evident in hers as he said with a flat, dispassionate voice, "You've got no balance. No strength in your left arm. How are you going to hold recoil? Not a damn one of them is going to cover you out there, Sera. If someone gets behind you, gets upwind of you, you're dead. The Vault Hunters are just like we used to be. They're just doing this for the money."

"Used to be?" Sera questioned, standing up straight. She wrenched her arm away from him and stood so close, in his face as she replied, "Last I checked, Mordecai, aside from a parting of ways, we are still the same greedy, disgusting Vault Hunters we used to be." She glanced him up and down with a look that Maya couldn't see but could tell it affected Mordecai easily enough. "Unless you've changed..." she told him and turned to walk away. Pausing, said over her shoulder, "I'm gonna go blow some heads off. You stay here and play it safe."

It was only then that Maya found herself noticed. A passing glance from Sniper B said all was well, that it was time to go. On the way to Opportunity, Sera said nothing as she rode in the back of the bandit-wrecked runner. Maya only had time to think as she sat in the cab, beside Axton as he drove, Salvador in the gunner's seat, and Zero sitting in the back with Sera. She remembered Lilith had mentioned in passing that Sera never used names, that the easiest way to tell she was angry was her use of names. Twice she had said Mordecai's name. Aside from her voice raising, it could have been anyone's conversation, anyone's disagreement. She didn't know either snipers well enough to pass an educated guess, but she could only assume the worst. Sarcasm, harsh words. It was obvious Mordecai still had some care for the other sniper. The opposite, however, could not be assumed.

"Hey!" Sera called down from where she knelt atop the low-hanging rooftop. "You awake down there?" she asked and then offered her hand.

Without assistance, Maya followed her up, ascending the building in careful steps, waiting as the sniper took aim and put end to another assailant upon her fellow comrades.

"You know," Sera told her, sliding her rifle over her shoulder, reaching to another roof top and pulling herself up. "I have no problem finding high ground on my own."

"Yeah," Maya told her, reaching up to follow. "You just look a little green is all."

When she rose to her feet, glancing to the sniper to clarify her statement of being green in the face and not commenting on skill, she paused, her heart catching in her throat. Sera stared forward, shock still, her hands loose at her sides. The upper part of the building kept the breeze from them, kept them shielded, kept the terrible smell of death from reaching them as they ascended.

Ahead of them, a red cloth pitched behind it as if a backdrop to a trophy, sat the body of a headless beast. Webbed wings, gray feathers, clawed feet. Recognition struck the Siren. There before them lay Bloodwing. She had wondered what had happened to the body. Knowing hadn't made anything better.

Through the ECHOnet, she heard Axton calling them. "We could use some help down here!"

Maya decided not to reply, she lowered the volume, quieted the noise that came from the battle below. Not sure what to do, she tried to shake Sera out of it. They had a job to do, had to get stationed above to shoot below. Stepping forward, she set a hand upon the sniper's arm.

Suddenly, Sera covered her mouth, vomit spewing through her fingers, down her arm. She stumbled away, tried to get away from the Siren, to shield herself from view. Hands on the wall, she heaved, her stomach churning until there was nothing left but a terrible dryness and an awful sound. Maya turned away, covered her nose and mouth. She steeled her stomach and turned back in time to hear Sera say, "Do me a..." she gagged, "favor... pretend you didn't see that."

"Sure thing," Maya replied casually.

"Son of a bitch..." the sniper gasped, striking her fist against the wall. "Son... of a bitch."

Through the ECHOnet came Axton's voice once more. "Maya! Sera! Where the hell are you two?"

Clearing her throat, Sera coughed, "Go ahead... I'll catch up."

The Siren hesitated. She wasn't sure whether or not leaving Sera on her own with the body of a fallen friend was the best idea. Mordecai had snapped when it had happened, thrown himself far into the bottle and Sera's constant berating had brought him back. She wasn't sure if it would work the other way around. If one sniper's vice was the bottle, what was the other's?

Slowly, Maya decided to leave, returning to the fray before the last statue fell. A badass overseer had the others held down. It fired missiles and Maya merely raised her hand, caught it in a solid phaselock and it sucked the shot back into the overseer and it blew in the front, disrupting the stabilizers, and it careened into the water.

"About time you showed up," Axton grumbled. He looked behind her and frowned. "Where's Sera?" The color drained from his face.

"Relax," she told him, "She's not dead yet... But Jack might be soon."

A question mark flashed above Zero's faceplate.

She told him what they had seen, that Sera had asked for a moment to herself. She didn't tell them about the moment of weakness the sniper's stomach had given. "She'll catch up," Maya assured them.

"I don't like leaving her without some kind of cover," Axton muttered.

Eyes narrowing, Maya let the thoughts that had surfaced slide away and said, "Trust me, nobody's sneaking up on Sera. She's ready to light the whole city on fire."

Behind them, the roof Maya had left the sniper upon suddenly went up in flames. The new Vault Hunters spun around, staring up at the flames that licked the horizon. Zero recorded it on the camera they had borrowed from Moxxi. At the top of the building, he zoomed in, seeing a dark figure surrounded by the light of the flames.

"Is she trying to draw attention to herself?" Axton growled.

Handsome Jack's voice suddenly boomed over the ECHOnet. "Wha... What the hell? Now you're burning my trophies?! O-hohohoooo! I get it. It's the damn bird! I forgot all about that rotting carcass. You know, I was thinking of turning it into jerky. But then I thought of all the slag experiments we did on that thing and just didn't know if it'd be healthy."

He was continuing on and on until a shot rang out. Then he quieted and shouted, "That double-crossing bitch!"

"And that," Maya chuckled, "is the distraction we need to get looking for that body double."

Repair drones darted by the flaming building and suddenly burst into pieces with bullets from a steady repeater in Sera's hand as she stood at the edge of the roof.

The new Vault Hunters spread out, searching for one of Jack's body doubles to shoot in the face. When they finally came upon one, it was difficult to tell. He had been shot in the neck, his lower jaw missing, his head and spine splintered back, a large hole in his body. Salvador chuckled. They hadn't known where Sera's first shot had gone, and now it was evident that it hadn't been an empty shot.

"Told you he pissed her off," Maya replied, pulling a pocket watch from the dead man's body.

In the distance, they heard a voice, a droning explanation of Jack's history of lies on Pandora. They moved to investigate, rounding a building to see Sera walking through Handsome Jack's museum of himself. Maya watched her frown, watched her tilt her head and listen intently. Then she drew back swiftly and slammed her hand into the panel. Picking it apart, she grabbed a circuit board and ripped it out. From one of her many pockets, she drew another and settled into wiring it into the broken system.

"Hellooooo Sera!" a voice rang from the system, an obvious claptrap voice.

"Hello Güt," she said without any semblance of emotion.

"Sera," the claptrap said softly, "you sound sad."

"Wreck this shit for me, Güt," she said.

"Ha Ha! With pleasure!" the claptrap shouted.

Suddenly all of the exhibits began to speak at once, voices colliding, rushing over each other in a jumbled mass of confusion. And then it warped. "Wuuuuuub," echoed out through Opportunity. "Wuuuub."

Sera grinned as the beat suddenly kicked in. "Wub wub wub." It continued on, quick, erratic. "Drop!" The beat dropped and all was still before it jumped back into motion. Then, the Claptrap could be heard shouting, "Now get me out of here!"

The sniper fiddled with the circuit board she had installed, removed it, replaced it in her pocket, but the deafening dubstep could not be stopped. Then, as if she had never been there, had never touched a thing, she began to walk away.

"I'm really starting to like her," Axton smirked. Maya rolled her eyes.

Salvador stuck a finger in his ear. "This is music?" he grumbled.

Angel connected to them then, told them they needed to get the voice samples from the terminals to get into the bunker. They raced to do that then, as she told them it needed to happen now, soon, with all urgency in her voice. And then she added, "Keep an eye on Sera... She could use a friend right now."

"That..." Axton muttered afterward, "was awkward..."

"You said you liked her," Salvador laughed, "I'd be her friend."

"I'm sure that's not what Angel meant," Maya replied. Zero chuckled, still holding the camera. "Put that away," the Siren muttered, pushing the focus of the film off of herself and the other two. "We have things we need to be doing. We'll catch up with Sera later."

In the end, it was Sera who found them. After all was done, Jack's Underdome foreman killed, the Opportunity propaganda video sent universe-wide with scenes of carnage, destruction, and the burning building with the other sniper standing atop it like a crazed mass-murderer, all to a delightful claptrap dubstep, they returned to the Fast Travel station after compiling everything into the pocket watch, and Sera stood waiting, watching the building in the distance still burning.

"Glad you could join us," Maya told her, eying her face, her lack of expression as if everything were so casual.

"Let me see that watch," she told them.

Axton replied, "It'll change your voice," as Zero handed it over.

Sera took the object, examined it, and then smirked. Clearing her voice, she sang, "I'm a little teapot, short and stout..." When she heard her voice, Jack's voice, coming from her mouth, she laughed. It was the opposite reaction Zero had had. After initiating a group chuckle, a smile on the other sniper's face, she then said, "Now, kiddos, let's go kill that Lynchwood bitch."

"She's enjoying this too much," Salvador observed.

"That voice is not mine," Zero commented, "I am content without it. Let her have her fun."

The arrival in Lynchwood was easily noticed. Bandits had stood like fools, watching a grenade zoom out of the train station, circle about them, hover over them. Suddenly, they were sucked into one area and the explosion after sent blood and body parts in every direction. "I love Lynchwood!" Handsome Jack's voice rang out from Sera's mouth as she walked out to the platform, hands on her hips.

"Been here before?" Maya asked, striding up beside her.

"See that bridge right there?" Sera asked, voice soft so that it sounded a masculine whisper. When the Siren nodded, she added, "Hung from that thing for five whole minutes waiting for Mordecai to cut me down."

"Seems like a story," the assassin said, now much more conversational that his voice was unaltered. "This the source of discontent. That started it all."

"You really need to work on your haiku, Ninja," Sera muttered, Jack's sound of displeasure. "Comments all day and you can't haiku a question, still."

Axton frowned. "I see Sera. But I hear Jack talking shit." He shook his head.

Maya added, "All it does is make me want to shoot him even more."

"Can I keep this thing?" the other sniper questioned. "I will call it my Handsome Shield."

"It won't work too well once he's dead," Salavador reminded her.

"Kill my fun," she sighed and then muttered, "I like Brick better."

They made their way through town, through the tunnel out to where the sheriff was supposed to be waiting. The moment they stepped into the center of the town, the marshals and the deputy began to shoot. Above them, the sheriff began speaking, running her mouth, talking about killing Brick's puppy, strangling it. Sera caught Zero's attention and he gave her a boost to a the side of the building. Salvador killed Deputy Winger. No one would blame him. The deputy shot first, any of them would have shot back. The gunzerker had only done it first.

Maya grasped the marshals in a crushing phaselock. Two she killed instantly, bodies in pieces like Sera's grenade had done to the bandits upon arrival. Two others were injured, but before they had the chance to fall, Axton's expert turret pumped them full of bullet holes and when they fell to the ground they could only gasp dying breaths. The last two, Zero caught their attention with a distraction, his own expert deception, and ran his sword through their chests and removed their heads in smooth, swift cuts.

At the quick deaths of those on the ground, the new Vault Hunters looked up to see the other sniper on her feet, slamming the butt of her rifle down, once, twice... again and again. Each blow drew blood up, spattering the other sniper's face until it was safely assumed that the sheriff's face was only ruin.

"Did you... did you just kill my girlfriend?" Handsome Jack questioned from somewhere in the world.

Maya watched the other sniper reach down, then she stood up, leaning on the railing, covered in blood, an ECHO device in her hand. "Hi Jack," she said, "This is your conscience." Her words were even, charming, what Jack would have sounded like if he were trying to sell someone a car.

"Who... Who the hell is this?" he shouted.

"I'm you," Sera replied, "if you weren't a total dick."

"Goddamnit!" he raged. "If it's the last thing I do, I'll—"

Sera cut in, "Please, think of something. I dare you. Everything else you've pretty much killed. It's time for you to lose a little, Jack. I regret that it wasn't me that finished off Wilhelm. But we're coming for you. First it's your little sheriff. Then, we're coming for your angel, coming for your whole goddamn corporation, and anybody else that thinks they have a right to our lives."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Jack laughed, loud, condescending.

"Hey," Sera said and Handsome Jack fell quiet, "My Claptrap says hello."

Every ECHOnet device suddenly silenced, turned to static, and then ear-splitting dubstep coursed out through Pandora. "Wub wub, asshole," a Claptrap's voice said from every ECHO device. Sera proceeded to destroy the object in her hand, placing another object into her pocket, and she descended from the building, climbing down to the sand below.

"The best part," Salvador said after some time, "was that it sounded like Jack was talking to himself."

Maya smirked. It had sounded that way, as if Handsome Jack had lost his mind, arguing his own demise, threatening himself.

Taking a slow breath, Sera appearing murderous with the blood of another on her hands, on her rifle, she suddenly smiled and threw her arms out wide. "Come! Fellow Vault Hunters! Onward!" she said, Handsome Jack's voice passing her lips.

At the Headquarters of the Crimson Raiders, Roland stood, hands on the central table projecting his plans for Pandora, his head lowered. The wub-wub beat pounded throughout Sanctuary. Lilith came running up the stairs, stopped across the room from him. "Roland?" she asked. When he looked up, the greatest grin across his lips, she had to smile. He had been much too worried, sending Sera out, sending the new Vault Hunters to Opportunity, but it was worth it. The destruction and anger that the other sniper had caused was more than he was expecting. There would be a reason for the flames that he hadn't counted on, and he would be certain to ask her.

"God!" came a voice from the balcony and Roland and Lilith turned to see Mordecai staring out at the floating city. "I hate this music!"

Brick, standing beside him, gave a happy laugh. "It's not my favorite," he told Mordecai, "but Sera did it, and that's okay by me."

"You're just happy they killed the sheriff," the sniper muttered.

"If it makes you feel any better," Brick began, "she took a lot longer killing my puppy than Jack did with Bloodwing."

Sighing, Mordecai shook his head, "Not really," he replied, "but... thanks, I guess."

"Enjoy the music," Lilith said as she came to stand between the sniper and the berserker. "It's a sign of celebration. I like to think of it as a small victory."

"Yeah," Mordecai grumbled, "I just hope every victory doesn't end with wub-wub." He shook his head quickly, "and someone needs to take that pocket watch away from her. She's a creepier Jack than Jack is."

A hearty laugh from Brick brought smiles all around. Roland said, "Sera always told me she'd be the end of Pandora."

"Can you imagine?" Mordecai mused, "It'd be dubstep and claptrap parts, and snow would be banned."

"And a trash feeder subspecies wouldn't be endangered anymore and would be a protected species," Lilith added.

Mordecai looked at her with confusion. The Siren stared back at him with surprise. "What'd you say?" he asked.

"I'm wondering," Lilith began, "if I should have said that."

"This song is giving me a headache," Roland muttered from behind them.

Suddenly, the music ended and Handsome Jack's voice came from the stairs, "Citizens of Pandora! Bow to me!" The old Vault Hunter spun about, looked up. Sera, covered in blood, grinned back at them. Behind her stood the new Vault Hunters. "Best. Day. Ever," she said.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter**** 7**

The room was dark, dim. Quiet. Silence rang in their ears like someone screaming. Maybe one of them had screamed. Everything was a blur. Salvador was the first to shake everything off. There were boxes around them, and boxes held goodies. Standing up straight, Axton was soon to follow, taking a deep breath and walking off everything that had happened. Zero said nothing, remained where he was, standing beside Sera as she knelt on the floor. Maya stood across from her, quiet, watching.

It had started out as a good day. From Thousand Cuts, they had marched forward with a spray of bullets and the insanity that only a true Vault Hunter could display. They danced through the mortars that exploded up the path, worked their way up to the bunker. And then, true to Handsome Jack's nature, the bunker was not what it had appeared to be.

The destruction of auto-turrets signaled the security system and, at least once, each of them nearly lost a limb. The flying bunker had been worse. Brick's Slabs were doing the best they could, but in the end, they were barely a distraction. It took continuous fire, standing in the focus of the flying beast, to take it down. Salvador was much too happy. The auto-turrets were blown, the giant sight in the front went next. They knocked it to the ground and cherished their victory with high-fives and obscene gestures toward Jack's fallen defense.

Reloading, lining their pockets with rounds, they descended into the Core. Maya held onto her anxiety. Adrenaline coursed through her veins. Beside her, Sera fidgeted, hands tightening on her antique Tediore. At that moment, she remembered their departure from Sanctuary. Roland declared he was going to ascend the bunker, meet them inside Angel's Control. Brick was ready to hit the sky with the Buzzards. Angel had told them to keep Lilith out. Roland had asked Mordecai to stay. The sniper was unhappy about it. He wanted to be out with everyone. It was then that Sera grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the others, into the anteroom. She shoved him into the corner, forcing him to sit atop a mostly full barrel of booze that he had since left alone.

Maya wasn't the only one to glance back. Axton had been curious, too, looking into the other room to where Sniper B leaned in close, her hands on the wall at either side of him, trapping Mordecai within her barrier. They couldn't hear a word she said, but Sniper A listened close, sat still, his anger and tension leaving. Then, after a moment, he spoke. "Yeah. Alright," he said. Sera took a step back, allowing him to stand, and when he did, they were too close, their bodies touching. Mordecai slid his hands from her shoulders down her arms. She pulled away and turned her back on him.

As she walked back toward the other room, Sera looked up to see two of the new Vault Hunters watching her. "Nosey," she told them. Maya grinned. The Siren glanced up to Axton, saw the void expression on his face. There was something she felt she was missing.

Inside, they found Angel, found another Siren, Handsome Jack's daughter. They listened to her plead, asking them to destroy her. Jack needed a Siren to charge the key, a powerful source of energy.. They needed to cut off the eridium pipes and Sera and Salvador were the first to charge in, to try. If the thought had passed through their heads that they were killing someone, someone who had helped them so often, someone who was innocent of Jack's crimes, it didn't show. And then the security system rose. And then Roland arrived.

Chaos swelled through the Core, bullets flew in every direction. Angel brought them ammunition and each bullet was spent blowing loaders into pieces. Jack's voice screamed around them to not hurt his innocent daughter, that he would get his revenge. His words fazed none. After the first two pipes were blown, Jack destroyed the bridge, dropping Roland back into the fray once more. And then the Firehawk arrived. Lilith was there and it wasn't that they weren't happy for the help, but it was quickly noticed that Sera stuck close to the red-haired Siren.

When the last pipe was destroyed and the poor trapped Siren within her eridium infused cage collapsed, died with few words other than thanks. The old Vault Hunters paid respect to their fallen Guardian Angel. The new could never understand what the others had been through. They had been duped from the beginning, by the Siren called Angel whom had led them to serve Handsome Jack. Yet even through the betrayal, she was still separate from the violence. There had been no choice for her, until she made her decision of sacrifice. And the respect for that decision was written upon the faces of the old.

Taking a breath, Roland turned to them, smiled, began his speech, began to tell them their next steps. Sera had been standing before him, Axton at her side, when Roland's chest had exploded, blood spraying forward. Lilith shouted, rushed forward, and Jack caught her with a collar, harnessing her Siren abilities and ordering her to kill them all. Lilith screamed. The light, the Firehawk's light, was blinding.

Suddenly they were elsewhere, somewhere in a dark room, a storage room. Sera knelt on the floor beside Roland's body, holding onto his hand as if a shake, a wish, a belief, would wake him and bring him back to life. In her other hand, she held his ECHOnet device, a clear shot straight through the middle of it. Zero's hand settled upon her shoulder and she tensed, dropping her gaze to Roland. The device fell away, clattered on the floor.

Salvador's voice broke the silence. "Where are we?" he grumbled.

Sera stooped down, pulled Roland's arm around her shoulder, tried to lift his full weight. Maya stepped in to help. The Leader of the Crimson Raiders was heavy, and as they dragged him to the end of the hall, through rooms of unopened boxes, a trail of blood on the floor behind them, the others followed.

At the end of the hall, the door opened. Marcus stood, staring at them. "Are you kidding me?" he complained, not noticing the deceased man they bore. "You Vault Hunters!" And then he saw Sera, the blood across her face, the blank expression she bore. His anger grew, his fists clenched. "You!" he shouted.

The other sniper adjusted the weight on her body, stood up straight, defiance glaring back at him. She appeared as if she wanted to say something, anything, but she kept her mouth closed. Axton moved ahead of them to open the door. As Sera and Maya moved to pass, Marcus seized her, pulled her back, and she threw her elbow into his stomach, knocking him back into the office. "Hands to yourself, Old Man," she said, her voice hoarse, as if the words didn't want to form. As she returned to take up Roland's weight, she said over her shoulder, "I saw some of Mom's things back there. When this is all over, I'm coming back for them."

There was barely time to register her words, for she was ready to move again, ready to carry their fallen comrade to the Headquarters he built. They all moved with her.

Sanctuary watched them cross the terrible distance, though only one bore more pain than the others. Within the Headquarters of the Crimson Raiders, their fallen leader placed upon a bed, Mordecai rushed down the stairs to meet them. "What happened?" he was shouting. "Where's Lilith?" Tannis stood back, stared.

Crossing his arms, Salvador questioned, "Does this mean we might be able to get a discount?"

"Tough luck," Sera replied roughly, "in case you haven't noticed, we're not on the best of terms."

Rubbing his head, Axton asked, "Marcus is your father?"

"Do we really have time for this?" Maya replied hotly.

Zero's faceplate shone with a broken heart.

An argument erupted, voices all at once. Mordecai looked from one Vault Hunter to another. He couldn't make sense of a single word. "HEY!" he shouted. "EVERYBODY SHUT UP!"

"You!" Sera rounded on him suddenly, stalked towards him. "You son of a whore!" Before she reached him, she drew back with all intention to strike. When she did, he caught her hand, spun her about and pinned her arms at her sides.

"The rest of you go do something!" Mordecai said to the new Vault Hunters and, at Maya's urging, they left. It was Tannis that refused to go, complaining. "I'll let her go and she'll level you for another day, Tannis," the sniper warned and she left, shutting the door on the way out, watching Sera struggle in his grasp.

When the door closed, Sera's legs folded. She let herself drop, and her dead weight broke Mordecai's hold. She swung beneath his legs and kicked him, knocking him off balance and sending him stumbling forward. Pushing herself to her feet, she stared back at him. "You lied!" she shouted.

Turning to face her, Mordecai sighed, "You really think I could have stopped her, Sera? Do you? The eridium is boosting her power. Nothing could have stopped the Firehawk. Not me. Not you. Not anybody. And I'll be damned if I didn't try!"

She stood before him, shaking. Her fists clenched so tight that her muscles trembled. He understood suddenly. The years apart had only changed her so much. It was always easier to be angry. Sera didn't cry.

Slowly, he crossed the distance to her. Standing before her, he waited for her infamous anger to rise again, the anger she was known for, the anger they had been waiting for at her arrival. If she wanted to blame him for not stopping Lilith, he would take it. There was much that she held against him, he knew, and he braced himself for anything that would come, whether it be his failure to honor his promise and keep Lilith safe, or his betrayal to Moxxi's bed.

Weight touched his body. His breath caught. He froze. But she stood before him with her head lowered, set against his chest. She stood before him with resignation. "Now, more than ever," he whispered, "we need you here with us Sera. You can't give up now. Not yet."

Marcus looked down the hall to his storeroom, at the blood that trailed from one end, all the way up the stairs and out. Sera had stared back at him with such defiance, it only led him to anger. Before the Vault Hunters had come, she followed orders like a good little girl.

Stocking his machines had been so much easier with her help. He would bring the Vault Hunters to Fyrestone, and she would lead them to where the Vault was thought to be. However, she would only take them so far. In the middle of heavy fire, she stepped back and gunned them down, bringing their off-world weapons back to him, and they would sell them to the next batch of Vault Hunters to arrive.

Her hair had been long then, not messy and dreaded, and she had been so much quieter. He loved his daughter, such a beautiful girl. Marcus didn't know what to think when, suddenly, the Vault was opened, and Sera did not return. They had taken her away from him, taken his supply and supplier and they were none-the-wiser. He didn't catch up to them, catch up to her, until their fight with General Knoxx.

When they battled their way to the armory, he found them walking back out, before it blew. "Sera!" Mordecai called after her as she walked away from them.

She turned, striding backwards. "I'm not going in there. She said it would blow."

"We'll regenerate," Roland assured her.

Pausing in step, Sera crossed her arms. "Yes, I want to regenerate so a look-alike of myself can walk around. You ever realize it isn't the real you?"

Mordecai grinned. "You think too much," he told her.

"Worrying like a mother hen," Lilith chuckled.

With a groan, Mordecai walked away, "Don't start that, Lil."

"What'd I say?" Lilith questioned, smiling.

"Look," Sera said to them. "You guys go get yourselves blown up, and I'll wait right here for you when you regenerate." She pointed to a green light upon a pole. "It's right there. I'll be right here."

"We'll bring you back something," Brick told her.

"Make it shiny," she replied.

As the Vault Hunters marched back into armory, Marcus stepped up from where he had been. "No kiss goodbye?" he questioned her.

"Ha," she laughed abruptly. "How long have you been standing there?"

"When are you coming home?"

She stood very still, held her breath. He turned to her, watching her stare ahead at the place the Vault Hunters had gone. The wind swept at her long blonde hair in her high ponytail. She looked so much like her mother. She had inherited all that was beautiful about her, but inside, she was everything that he was. He saw himself in her, the readiness for blood, morbid amusement. And then, the quiet child she had been after her mother's passing, was all gone. Among the Vault Hunters, she only smiled. Even her anger was happy.

"I'm not," she replied softly, voicing words he did not want to hear.

"Not?" he asked.

"Not coming home," she told him. "I like being with them."

"With them?"

Lowering her gaze upon his face, she asked, "Are you going to just repeat parts of what I say, Dad?" Adjusting the scope-less white rifle on her back, she exhaled slowly. "Find somebody else."

"And the boy?"

"Boy?"

"The Truxican masked wrestler moonlighting as a dominatrix," he told her plainly.

Sera grinned, stuffing her hands into her pockets and drawing her shoulders forward into a shrug. "There's nothing I can tell you," she replied.

"Are you going to marry him?"

A laugh jumped out of Sera's throat and she slapped her hand over her mouth. "Damn, Pops, I can't say I've thought about this as much as you have," she told him.

"Your mother was a very honorable woman," he said.

"Yup," Sera replied and crossed her arms, "And you married Mad Moxxi."

"Sera," he warned.

"You started it," she muttered.

Suddenly, the armory exploded. Sera turned, shielding her face from the blast. Marcus left to stand at a distance as the Vault Hunters were pieced back together beneath the glow of the green marker. Sera stood waiting for them, paying her father no mind as he considered his new purchase. He watched Mordecai present to Sera a dark-colored sniper rifle. She looked it over, lifted it to check the sight. She squeezed the trigger and a light in the distance exploded. Grinning, she turned, handing it back with complete approval. "It's yours," he told her and a moment of confusion passed across her face before she hugged it to her body.

"Shiny enough?" Brick asked.

"Plenty," she replied.

Distance rose between them from the moment she had settled with the Vault Hunters, had stepped through the back door into the Atlas compound and set off into snow that she had never been in before. She had gone too far, working with them instead of planning against them as she always had. He didn't understand what had changed. Why were these Vault Hunters different than all of the others she had put a bullet to. And then, suddenly, his merely distant daughter became his enemy. Out of the blue, she blew through his newly bought armory and was out before it took her with it. She took money and weapons and vanished. If there was one thing he hated, it was losing money. Whether it was from a stranger, or his own flesh and blood, the action sent his blood boiling in his veins. Asking for a refund was a bullet to the leg. Theft was cause for death. In the end, he could hate as much as he wanted, but could only blame himself. She was his daughter, and he couldn't fault her for something he would have done. Yet he did, and continued to.

Staring down at the blood on his floor, he thought of her bloodied face looking back at him in recent memory, and her demand for the objects from her past. And then he saw it in his mind, saw the body she and the Siren dragged. Roland was dead, and it finally settled in.

Mordecai sat upon the bottom bunk, leaning back against the wall. Sera lay with her head upon his leg, arm draped across his lap. She had withdrawn upstairs and he had gone to keep an eye on her. She was hurting, trying to shut out the pain she was feeling. He knew her too well. He knew there were only two paths she would take. She would run, retreat to her tower in the Dust and not care any longer, or she would set out on her own. In anger, she would burn the world, hunt Jack by herself without fear of death.

Death. He closed his eyes. After their regeneration at the armory, she had laughed at them. Brick had told her she played it too safe, needed to loosen up and die a little. "I walk around without an ECHOnet," she told him, "I got a feeling I live more than you guys do. Dying is easy. Living is hard."

Running a hand over her blonde hair, he sighed heavily. He missed the softness of her hair, of her skin. Her closeness was not unwelcome. After losing her due to stupidity and lust, he never thought she would ever willingly be so near to him again. He was still waiting for her to run. She was biding her time, distracting him with closeness that he wouldn't argue, and then she would flee to her fortress and go after Jack head on. He knew then, at that moment, he didn't want to lose her yet. He was certain everything could be fixed if she was willing to push past it. He would try harder. She would not be lost the way Roland was.

The comfort he felt around her, the stress of the day. He was exhausted. As his eyelids flitted closed, he felt the bed move, felt Sera rise from his side. "You can't even wait til I'm asleep, can you?" he asked.

"You're tired," she sighed, "I'm leaving so you can get some sleep."

"Liar," he said, sitting up straight.

"I need to bury Roland before he starts smelling up HQ..." she told him, leaving the bed.

"Brick'll be here soon," Mordecai told her. "He can help us."

"You're not going anywhere," she said, turning to face him. "You need to be here for the Vault Hunters."

Jumping off of the bed, he said, "I'm not staying this time, Sera."

Her gaze leveled upon him, her brow raised. "I don't need you watching over me," she told him.

"I'm not trying to watch over you," he countered, "I'm trying to cover your ass."

She grumbled something in a different language, in his own language. "What?" he questioned. She repeated her words and he could only say, "Wait a damn minute! Don't you—" and it was as far as he got before he was caught up in words that were the same as hers.

Truxican shouting drew the new Vault Hunters upstairs. "What the hell is going on?" Maya asked softly.

Salvador cleared his throat as Sera became very still, her fists clenched, her jaw tight. "He just called her a bitch," he muttered.

"That's a good way to get a woman to knock your head off," Axton murmured.

"I'd probably do worse," Maya shrugged.

With a few choice Truxican words, Sera left, walked between the new Vault Hunters and down the stairs. Salvador smirked. Zero's faceplate shown with a broken heart. "You understood that?" Maya asked the assassin and he nodded.

Taking a slow, steadying breath, Mordecai left the new Vault Hunters upstairs and followed Sera to the bottom floor. Dropping off the last step, he found Brick and Sera walking out the door with Roland's lifeless body. He hurried to follow. Sera said nothing as Brick carried Roland in his arms.

"Should we wait for Lilith to do this?" Mordecai asked.

"You're being sentimental," Sera replied as they came to a stop before the Fast Travel station. She accessed the panel and they left Sanctuary.

They appeared before the rock pillar in the middle of a desert canyon, somewhere in the Dust. The shield was still in place overhead, spanning from the top of Sera's home. Mordecai looked up, stared at it. He didn't know when she had set up a link to this place. The house on the top of the rocks was nothing like he had ever seen before.

When she left them, vanished into an opening in the pillar, a hidden door, Brick placed their deceased friend upon the sand. They stood still, waited, not a word mentioned. She returned with a pair of shovels and she and Brick began to dig. Mordecai could only stand and watch as Sera refused to acknowledge his presence.

Harsh words had been shared. She hadn't spoken to him in his own language in years, not since their time branching off together, not since the Underdome. She still had a firm grasp of words and meanings, and he had let his anger get the best of him at the Headquarters. He had expected worse, a hit, something, but she had only told him that she was done with him, and that had struck him worse than anything else. Sera wanted nothing more to do with him, but he couldn't let it go, let her go. He was a Hunter, and as such, would get what he wanted.

His ease, if only briefly as they lay together, had brought the past rolling back to him. He knew that nothing would ever be the same, even if he could reach her. Their family was fractured with Roland being placed in a sand pit. He would stop at nothing to bring Lilith back, and he knew that Sera and Brick felt the same way. They could do it with the help of the new Vault Hunters. They could take Handsome Jack's head.

Roland buried, Sera slammed her shovel into the ground at the head of his resting place. They had no marker with them, and there was no time to decorate now. No longer needing Brick's help, she let them be, allowed the quiet to settle in. Before Mordecai realized it, he had sunken into regret. He should have been with them. He should have followed Lilith. He should have been the one to help carry Roland home, instead of Sera and one of the new Vault Hunters.

Glancing back, he found Sera gone. He looked to Brick and found him leaving as well. "Where'd she go?" Mordecai asked.

"We need a plan," Brick said, "she's gone to go think of one."

9


End file.
